


Power Is (As Power Does)

by BirchBow (chaoticTenebrism)



Category: Motorcity (Cartoon)
Genre: ...With A Happy Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Decisions, Blackmail, Boss/Employee Relationship, CEO Julie Kane, Childhood Friends to Estranged Friends to Dramatically Tormented Lovers, Corporate corruption, Director Mike Chilton, Employee Abuse, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Just Bad Decisions All Around Being Made By Dumbasses, M/M, Power Imbalance, Recovery, and also NOT featuring Julie:, why isn't there a tag for that come on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 12:01:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18010550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticTenebrism/pseuds/BirchBow
Summary: One day before the Succession, Julie has a lesson with her dad.-Two days before the Succession, Mike calls his best friend.-Three days before the Succession, the chop shop gets a client.





	1. denial

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Please note that this fic contains 1. smut and 2. two boss/employee relationships--one of them is mutually respectful and 100% fine with both parties, which features in this chapter, and one of them is definitely not. Please be careful with your mental health if that's something that's not good for you!)

Three days before the Succession, the chop shop gets a client.

That's not incredibly unusual; Don [ _Name Redacted_ ] is the only stylist in Kane Co. tower. One of the only people in the entire city of Deluxe who still gives manual haircuts. Most of Deluxe doesn't need his services, when it comes down to it, not with a personal styling station in every habitation pod, so Don spends most of his days sitting in his pod waiting for an assignment, playing games or chatting with people on his comm until somebody needs...the other kind of haircut.

It's not an uncommon sight, or really a surprise, when the door slides open and a tall, skinny boy in a white coat is dragged through it by one arm. Don sees a lot of the R&D boys, up here; smart kids who didn't deliver on their pitches to Mr. Kane, or even smarter kids who poked around where they shouldn't have. Kane Co. lets the boys run pretty much loose downstairs as long as they do as they're told—grow out their hair, dye it all sorts of colors, even a few illegal piercings or easily-hidden tattoos. But _only_ as long as they do as they're told.

When they don't, those liberties stop applying, and the bosses who were turning a blind eye suddenly start noticing things like makeup or hair dye, piercings or non-standard uniforms. Sometimes Don's clients just show up with miserable expressions, jaws set and heads low, shoved through the door by a bored-looking cadet. Sometimes they come up staggering, held halfway off the ground by two Elites, lip split or eyes swollen. Sometimes, rarely, it's an older client, somebody old enough to be Don's father. Those are hard; proud, experienced men holding a screen in shaking hands, watching decades of earned privileges and hard-won promotions vanish from their system as they're stripped away.

The only thing harder is the kids. The junior techs and interns, lab coats and uniforms cuffed up to fit them, barely older than Don's twelve-year-old daughter. A kid came up to Don once, a few years ago; a fresh R&D hire who accidentally said something not quite polite enough to a passing Executive intern. He'd been heartbreakingly small, trembling in the chair, with a mess of dark brown curly hair and huge, grey eyes, and the Cadet who hauled him in had been big enough his hand went all the way around the boy's arm. Don had wanted nothing more in the world than to give the kid a hug and send him home to his parents, tell him to get out of there.

He'd shaved the kid's curls to a flat, "professional" buzz instead, and listened to the cadet laughing on the comm with some buddy about how he was "just taking some baby pencil-pusher to the chop shop" and how he figured it was 50/50 the kid got fired.

It's not a nice job, or a fun one. But somebody will end up doing it whether Don is there or not. He takes care with the cuts he gives, makes them look as good as he can even though they're unwanted, tries to offer a word of comfort or a hand on a shoulder here or there. It seems like the least he can do.

The kid that just got dragged into his pod is definitely not the youngest Don's ever cut, but he's not all that old either, probably no more than twenty. Pale, freckled and very tall, but standing like he wishes he was much smaller. He looks about like every other scared tech who gets hauled upstairs to Don's pod, but the man doing the dragging is new; broad and sturdy, with a stern, lined face and a fixed, tight smile. Familiar, not in person, but from public events and the daily announcements.

"Director Larsson," says Don, and stands up abruptly, minimizing the screen he was playing aimless games on. "It's a pleasure, um—what can I do for you?"

"I have a job for you," says the head of R&D, and pulls the tech forward with him, holding on tight enough it looks like his grip must hurt. The boy goes mutely where he's pulled, eyes fixed miserably on the floor through his long, unruly bangs. Don looks from him to the director, wrong-footed and not happy about it.

"You want me to...?"

"Cut his hair," says Director Larsson. "That's your _job,_ if I'm not mistaken? Not..." he shoots a disdainful look around the pod, taking in the magazines on Don's table and the entertainment complex in the corner. "...Whatever it is I apparently interrupted."

Don has never interacted with Director Larsson, or had much of an impression of him beyond "that angry old man who smiles all the time", but so far he's not a fan. Fortunately, he's got a pretty good poker face at this point. "I see, sir," he says, blank and courteous. "A trim, or—?"

"You know what I want," Director Larsson says sharply, and grabs a handful of the tech's hair, jerking his head to one side sharply. "It's an eye-sore. It's far too long." Don startles, taken aback by the open cruelty of the gesture, and the boy stifles a tight noise of pain in his throat but doesn't pull away. His eyes are darting from his feet to Don's chair to Director Larsson and back to the ground, and it kind of looks like he's trying not to cry.

Don swallows down the bitter burn of anger at the back of his throat and gives Larsson a mild smile, resting a hand on the boy's shoulder and giving it a comforting squeeze. "I can certainly do that. I'm sure you have things to do, Director Larsson—"

"Oh, nothing important right now," Larsson says immediately. His eyes are fixed on the tech's face, and there's a hard, cruel edge to his smile.

Geez, what did this kid do to piss his boss off this badly? It can't have been some kind of treasonous activity, hacking into something he wasn't supposed to see—he would have a security escort, not the head of department. But the Board of Directors are the most powerful men in Detroit Deluxe, apart from Mr. Kane himself. There's no reason this boy would ever even _see_ Director Larsson, let alone interact with him long enough to bring this kind of personal punishment down on his head.

Don looks back at his unwilling client and sighs. He's seen this boy before...maybe once, when he was new. His hair is bright gold with an unruly flip to the ends, vaguely and distantly familiar. But he, like a lot of the other R&D boys, has obviously been growing it out—a point of pride, showing off how long it's been since he had a disciplinary cut. He must have a real skill for keeping his nose clean, with hair all the way down over his eyes like that.

Or at least, he did. Now, apparently, his lucky streak is broken.

—

Two days before the Succession, Mike calls his best friend.

They don't get to see each other nearly enough anymore; Mike's got new Commander quarters in the barracks in Kane Co. tower, and Chuck has a cot set up in the corner of his R&D cubicle 80 floors down. He hasn't been spending a lot of time hanging out with Mike; he's been at work all the time, wearing himself ragged, shadows under his eyes and deeper hollows under his cheekbones. Briefer and briefer on calls with Mike, eyes darting away and lips thin. He has less to say.

When he picks up the call this time, Mike almost doesn't recognize him.

"Holy crap, Chuckles!" he says, startled, half-laughing. "Your hair! I thought you said you were never gonna cut it, dude, what happened? Did you burn half of it off again?"

Chuck kind of half-smiles, tight and small. Reaches up and runs his hands through his short-cropped blonde hair. "Uh, yeah," he says.

Mike's laughter dies. "...Buddy, are you okay?" he says. Chuck closes his eyes, swallows hard, looks back up at the screen and gives Mike the fakest, shakiest smile he's ever seen.

"I'm fine!" he says. "Don't worry about it. I'm...good. Look, uh. It’s been a really long day, I should—”

“Oh!” He does look really tired. Without the fall of his hair covering half of his face, his cheeks look a lot more hollow and his eyes look weirdly bruised, with huge shadows under them. He's also...pretty clearly not fine. But he also _definitely_ doesn't want to talk about it.

"—Lot of work to do," Chuck is saying, shoulders tight and back bent, like he's waiting for Mike to get mad at him for it. Mike shakes off what he was thinking about and swallows down the part of him that’s hurt, makes himself grin instead.

“Yeah, dude, totally. I just wanted to tell you, I got a message from Mr. Kane—I’m supposed to go up to his office tomorrow morning! I think...I think it’s good news.” He still can’t believe his luck—can _never_ believe his luck, every time Mr. Kane claps him on the shoulder or flashes him a brief smile or calls him ‘son’, Mike can’t believe it. He’s happy enough he doesn’t really register the way Chuck’s eyes tighten, the way his gaze darts over Mike’s face and his lips thin.

“Mike,” Chuck says, and stops himself, chews on his tongue for a second. “…Is everything…are you…”

“Huh?” says Mike.

Chuck holds his eyes for a long, long second, and then looks away. Reaches up to finger-comb his bangs into order and then twitches, hands brushing past his bare face. For a second he looks so exhausted, absolutely miserable, it’s kind of awful to see.

“I need to get some sleep,” says Chuck, and pushes his chair back from the desk. The sun is barely setting outside, but…wow, he does look really tired. “I—I hope—”

He doesn’t finish that sentence. Just gives Mike a tiny, raw smile, and says “Bye, Mike.”

If Mike had known then, that that was the last call he'd manage to get through to his best friend—that Mike wouldn't see him again for almost a year, and how it would happen when he did—he would never have— He would have just—

He doesn't know. He didn't know. He smiles. He hangs up the call.

—

One day before the Succession, Julie has a lesson with her dad.

That’s pretty common, these days. Julie is months deep in her lessons, blazing through everything he can teach her, challenging him more, surrendering less when he gets impatient. It’s not going to change his mind, but…she couldn’t live with herself, if she didn’t. So instead she backtalks, questions, refuses to back down as her dad pushes and pushes and _pushes._ It kind of makes her want to scream. Some days she just wants to run away to Motorcity, set up camp there, be free.

She can’t, though. Deluxe is her place, her city, and she’ll do a lot more good up here, ready to step into the CEO’s seat, than she would down in the undercity. She’s been planning her changes for more than a year now. She’s been passing little executive orders, too minor for them to filter back to her dad; laying the groundwork for the end of the war.

She doesn’t think anything of it, when her dad calls her up for another lesson. It’s not until she walks through the door and sees him, she falters.

Her dad looks…bad. Like, he’s looked bad for a while, stressed and tired and snappish, but he looks kind of…tense and sick, today. Kind of gray. Julie sits down cautiously, rethinking her strategy for the meeting, and her dad sits down too, leaning his elbows on the desk.

“Dad?” Julie says, uncertain, and her dad pinches the bridge of his nose and then straightens up and squares his shoulders, head held high. It makes him look a little more himself, but he still looks…weird, kind of exhausted.

“Just a long day, Julie-Bear,” he says. “Let’s get started.”

The lesson is strange; more a review session than a lesson, meandering over points they covered months ago. Julie dutifully takes notes, and keeps an eye on her dad, watching his occasional falter, his distracted frowning. He doesn't seem interested in talking about it, and she knows better than to ask, by now. They sit and talk until the sun is setting outside the broad strip of glass window. Julie's stomach is growling and her head feels kind of foggy by the time her dad says "...Good. That's all for today."

Julie sighs and pushes her chair back. Her dad gives her a brief, stern glance at her obvious relief, but he doesn't seem interested in growling at her about it. Instead, he says "...Matthews is stepping down."

Julie pauses, startled, in the middle of closing down her notes. " _Director_ Matthews?"

Her dad nods. "I'm going to appoint Mike Chilton as his replacement," he says, and Julie feels a little bolt of something weird and hot and jealous shoot through her. Her dad doesn’t seem to see it—he’s looking distracted again, rubbing one temple absently. “He’ll…hm. He’ll be a…valuable asset.”

“If he’ll even follow my orders,” Julie says, and resists the urge to slump down in her chair like a sulky little kid. Her dad considers her for a second, head a little on one side, and then, startlingly, he lets out a brief, low laugh.

“He will,” he says, with quiet, absolute certainty. Julie is suddenly aware, somehow, of the lines at the corners of his eyes. The streaks of grey making their way back through his hair. “They all will.”

—

Chuck is nineteen years, three months and eight days old when Kane dies.

He doesn't think too much about it. He has bigger things to worry about—or...smaller things, maybe. More...personal things. Kane dying doesn't change his situation at all; the humiliation of walking through the department with his freshly-cut hair so short he can barely run his fingers through it, the impotent anger at the unfairness of it all. Logically he knows that the death of the CEO is such a huge thing, the end of an era, but there's a new Kane in office within the weekend and there's no difference in Chuck's life as far as he can see. Security is still awful, R&D's deadlines are still looming, the Board of Directors are still...

The only thing that comes out of it that actually matters is that the board meeting is cancelled for the week. It's not much, but he's so grateful. It takes such an awful, looming weight off his chest for just a few days. _That_ matters. That's all that matters.

—

Mike is eighteen and a half when Mr. Kane dies.

His last orders were to Mike. His last _words_ were to Mike, Mike was the last person he saw before he died, and that seems...wrong, somehow, and cruel. He left Ms. Kane a video message, Mike knows, but Mike is the last person who saw him alive and that seems wrong.

Ms. Kane doesn’t seem to resent him for it, at least. She stands near Mike at the funeral, and when they all start to filter apart, she steps over to him and puts a small, pale hand on his arm.

“I know you were...really important to my dad,” she says, and squeezes his arm while Mike tries to breathe through that, the sudden, unreasonable swell of childish tears that choke his throat for a second. “I’m going to need your support, Director Chilton.”

Mike’s seen her before, but only from a distance; she’s small and thin, nothing like the solid figure Mr. Kane cut, and up close she’s even smaller, almost fragile-looking. But there’s a familiar fire in her eyes and iron in her spine that makes Mike immediately like her.

He salutes. “You’ll have it, ma’am.”

Ms. Kane smiles at him, and it’s not the same, the spark of warmth it fans in Mike’s chest—but it’s good. It feels good. Mike gives her a smile back, and dares to put a hand on her hand, pressing it against his arm. Sees, he thinks, just a hint of the same lost, desperate pain in her eyes.

“You’ll have me,” he corrects himself, softer, and Ms. Kane takes a slow breath, squeezing his arm again. She holds on for a long second, and then lets go, nods, and turns away. But the warmth of her hand on his arm lingers, as does the warmth of her smile. Mike watches her go, and then turns back to the casket, takes one last look at the silhouette of Mr. Kane’s face, motionless under the crisp, white sheet.

“…I’ll take care of her,” he says, as quietly as he can, and salutes the casket, head high and back straight and ignoring the way his eyes burn and his voice tries to break. “I promise. Sir, I swear.”

—

Julie is nineteen and three days old when her dad dies.

It's tempting to get angry about it, to blame somebody, to lash out, but she's not...him. She won't do that. That's what finished off her dad, in the end; stress and anger and overwork. He was sick and he refused to address it, and that's all there is to it. It wasn't some assassin from the undercity, not some political rival. Nobody killed her dad, except himself.

A day later, Julie is queen.

The official title is Chief Executive Officer of the Kane Lifestyle-Management Corporation. But looking out over her city, her subjects, the people whose lives she controls completely, she thinks she might as well be the queen. Looking out over her city, it feels less like a victory, and more like a trial she's doomed to fail. Like things will never be bearable again. Like she's the loneliest person in the world.

—

It's been eight months since Julie's dad died.

A lot of things have changed. This office is her office, now, not just her dad's office that she happens to be inhabiting. Her schedule isn't just a re-purposed copy of her dad's, it's her own schedule with her own priorities. She has an hour blocked out for a weekly massage break with the relaxation technicians on the 300th floor, an hour every day for exercise. Every month, a relaxation day.

...Every few days, a one-on-one meeting with her newest board-member.

Mike Chilton was her dad's favorite, before the succession. Julie knew it, everybody knew it. There was already a significant chunk of the tower that supported him—not just as the new head of Security, but as Kane's successor. Julie's well aware that a lot of people were really upset that Julie stepped up instead—although most of those mutters quieted down after Mike’s promotion went public. Commander-In-Chief of the Kane Co. Security sector, and fully, vocally in support of her.

Julie…struggled with him, at first. It was hard not to resent Mike, when her dad was still alive, because her dad loved him so openly, so…proudly. But Mike was never smug about it, never made it a big deal, and ever since then his support has been an unyielding constant. He's been very clear about the fact that he doesn't want a business management job, and he thinks Julie is the best person for the position.

Julie likes him, and has liked him, begrudgingly, ever since she first decided to give him a chance, at her dad's funeral. It's hard not to like Mike. It's hard not to smile back when he smiles, it's hard to...stay professional.

It's slightly easier to stay professional when he's standing at attention and giving reports, but even then there's a hint of a smile curving the corner of his mouth, and a trace of a dimple on one cheek. He's still kind of gangly, growing into the size of his hands and feet, but he's respectably solid with muscle under that, smarter than people give him credit for and quick off the mark. An exemplary leader, an excellent soldier. Earnest and charming and enthusiastic about his job in a way that's incredibly refreshing after growing up with her dad's paranoid, vicious head of security. Director Chilton believes that Security is _for the people,_ with a kind of unquenchable intensity that's stunning, sometimes.

It's not the only stunning thing about him, either.

"Mm," says Julie, and blinks away that thought. "So, recruiting went well?"

“We brought in thirteen new recruits yesterday,” says Director Chilton, and smiles his fearless, white-toothed smile. Julie can remember him after her dad died—for months Mike did nothing but work, grim and almost frantic, driving himself so hard he would pass out in his office. He'd been losing weight, shadows under his eyes, skin going ashy and sallow.

Julie feels a little self-conscious to think that she might have been the thing that fixed him, but Mike definitely started eating again after they started their arrangement, started staying up less and smiling more. He's glowing, now, in the light from the long windows; skin tanned soft golden-brown, a healthy flush along his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose from doing troop exercises out in the sun. Julie kind of...aches, looking at him. It's weird, being so painfully proud of somebody who's barely a few months younger than her.

"That's a good turnout," she says, a little late, and Director Chilton nods.

“They seem like promising boys, ma’am.”

“I see,” says Julie, and closes her notes, sitting back in her chair. “…Very good. Well done.”

“Thank you,” says Director Chilton, and it should sound rote but it sounds utterly genuine. “Will there be anything else, Ms. Kane?”

There’s no mistaking the hopeful edge in his voice. Julie considers, for a second, but…well, she’s well caught up. She could do with a break. There's a reason she pencils her meetings with her head of security in under "relaxation time".

It's been eight months since her dad died. A lot of things have changed.

“…Yes,” Julie says slowly. “I think there will.”

Director Chilton’s dark eyes widen slightly, then go half-lidded, pleased and anticipatory. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

“Come here,” says Julie, and scoots her chair back, gesturing at the space in front of her. Director Chilton doesn’t hesitate, just walks briskly forward and slips in between her and the desk, waiting.

"Facing you, Ms. Kane?"

"Yes, I think so," says Julie crisply. "I like looking at you."

It's not like he doesn't know it already, but the praise still makes him grin proudly, flushing a little. "Yes ma'am," he says, "thank you, ma'am."

He leans back against the desk without being prompted, softening the difference in their heights, leaning back on his hands. He knows she doesn't like to feel small, by now. The first few times they hooked up he tried to be forward with her—harmless enthusiasm, she knows in hindsight. He's not a pushy guy, even though he has every excuse to be now that he's the second-in-command of KaneCo. He's a sweet young man, with a little time and a firm hand to steady out his eagerness. Sweet and loyal and...obedient.

Julie looks him over silently for a while, enjoying the way he fidgets, waiting hopefully. Then she smiles to herself and reaches out to lay a hand gently on one of his thighs. It's been a long time since she hesitated to touch him, or wonder if it would be welcome—she's expecting the way Director Chilton twitches into the touch, hips jerking slightly, pressing into her hand. He glances down at her, and there's a faint hint of a flush on his cheeks and a wild, eager edge to his grin.

“…Excited, Director Chilton?” says Julie, in her best CEO voice.

Director Chilton's smile softens a little to something rueful, warm, a little embarrassed. “Permission to speak freely?”

“Mm…” Julie squeezes his thigh a little, enjoying the feeling of lean muscle shivering under her touch. “Permission granted.”

“That feels really nice, ma’am,” says Director Chilton. “And you look—very pretty today. Ma’am. I mean, you always do, I just—yeah, I'm excited.”

“You've been hoping I'd ask you to stay over, weren't you?" Julie says, amused, and Director Chilton flashes her a slightly sheepish grin and nods. Julie has to laugh. "Good. I'm glad you like this as much as I do."

Another brilliant smile—a little startled, every time, like he can't believe his luck. “Yes, Ms. Kane!”

“Okay,” says Julie brusquely, and scoots her chair forward a little, holding onto Director Chilton’s leg when he obligingly starts to move back against the desk to give her space. Chilton’s breathing speeds up audibly as he glances down at her, sees how he’s bracketed between her legs and the desk. Julie smiles up at him and slides the hand on his thigh up, in, cupping a hand lightly over his fly and seeing his throat work, a shiver going through his whole body.

“It's been a while,” Julie says thoughtfully. “I have some time to spare, today.”

He knows the way she likes to play when she has time to spare. His cheeks flush darker, she feels his hips shift a little against her palm. “However I can help, Ms. Kane,” he says dutifully, and there’s a hoarse edge to his voice. “Do you want me to keep my voice down, ma’am?”

The earnest question sends a curl of heat through Julie’s gut—this strong, capable young man, handing his body over to her, asking out loud how she wants him to act as she uses him. It’s heady, a hit of a drug she’s been missing in his days of recruitment and inspections.

“No need to control yourself,” she says, and Director Chilton nods immediately, enthusiastic to show off his attentiveness and obedience. “I'm sure you're pretty excited to get going, since it's been so long since our last meeting. You haven't gotten off since then, I think it would be mean of me to make you be quiet."

"No, I—" Director Chilton starts, and shivers as Julie strokes a thumb gently back and forth past his dick, smirking up at his increasingly flushed face. "I mean, yes, I haven't, and yes, I am, and—uh. Whatever you want, Ma'am. Thank you very much, Ms. Kane.”

“You’re welcome.” Julie twists her hair up and sticks the stylus she was using through the makeshift bun to hold it in place. “I do want you to keep your hands at your sides unless I tell you otherwise, though. And I don’t mind if you move a little, but don’t choke me. Be careful.”

“Of course,” says Director Chilton, looking almost a little offended that she'd even think to tell him. “I’d never—no, of course. Whatever you need, Ms. Kane.”

He’s most of the way hard by the time she unzips his uniform slacks, pulls his fly open and strokes her knuckles against him through his underwear. She only has to do that three or four times before she’s got him all the way hard, and she slides down his briefs with relish and considers his dick fondly. Director Chilton’s eyes slide away from her face as she nudges it with a knuckle, grinning—his cheeks are definitely red now. After all the things they've done, it’s really cute how he still gets flustered, apparently just from having Julie in proximity to his dick.

“Shy, Commander?”

Director Chilton wouldn’t do something as unprofessional as roll his eyes at her, but the look he gives her is almost as good. “…Do you _want_ me to look, ma’am?” is all he says.

“No,” Julie says, with half a laugh. “Actually…”

She leans in, and Director Chilton stiffens all over, hips twitching as he visibly forces himself to stay still. But Julie just reaches past him into the desk drawer, fumbles for a second, and then pulls out a strip of white cloth.

“I mean, I won’t look if you don’t want me to, ma’am,” Director Chilton says when she holds it up, with a weird, wry twist at the corner of his mouth. Julie smiles at him, extra-warm, and he smiles back a little, but there's still a furrow between his brows, a slight, tight edge to his jaw. Julie is well aware that as much as he enjoys the things she does to him, he's jumpy about the implication he might _need_ the restraints, that he can't follow orders or control himself without them. Julie reaches out, finds his wrist and gives it a squeeze.

“I know you don’t need it," she says, and Director Chilton relaxes a little. "I just want to see you in it, because it'll look good." She holds up the blindfold, business-like. “Put it on for me.”

“Of course, Ms. Kane.”

Julie waits until he’s done as he’s told and put his hands back at his sides. Then she leans in, licks her lips, and gently kisses the tip of his dick. Director Chilton starts to bite his lip, then visibly remembers his orders and lets the sound out instead, a sharp little caught breath that’s more air than noise. Julie smiles to herself, wraps a hand around each trembling-tense thigh, and sets about relieving some stress.

Director Chilton sighs and groans and lets out half-voiced murmurs— _oh, ah,_ and _ma’am, oh, wow—_ but he keeps his hands obediently at his sides even when Julie slows down specifically to tease him. She actually knows how to do that now, which is great; knows how to make his thighs tremble under her hands with how good she's making him feel, and knows how to make him groan and twitch and make frustrated noises. This is nothing like the first, fumbling time she tried blowing him, not least because it's a billion times more fun.

“I’m getting— _nnh,_ g-getting close, ma’am,” he reports eventually. Julie hums thoughtfully and doesn’t slow her pace, one hand on his hip to make sure his self-control doesn't break as she does her best to melt his brain out of his ears. Director Chilton gives a little full-body jerk, takes two fast, gasping breaths and then manages, "...Ah— _ah,_ Ms. _Kane,_ please, I won’t be able to stop—”

Oh, if he thinks that, he doesn’t know himself as well as she does. Julie hums again, feeling his hips shudder with the effort of not thrusting up into her mouth, and barely slows her pace. Director Chilton groans, and his hands twitch at his sides, desperately curling and uncurling. “ _Ma’am_ ,” he repeats, voice wobbly and breath shaking. Julie can’t see his eyes through the blindfold, but she can imagine his face; eyes squeezed shut and head tipped back, sweat beading the bridge of his nose. “I, hhh, _ah,_ please. I’m trying, but— I-if you want me to wait, please, Ms. Kane…”

Julie sighs out through her nose, and takes mercy. Director Chilton gasps as she pulls her mouth away, and his hips jerk against the air once, twice, three times, before he gets himself back under control and goes still again, catching his breath. He’s been biting his lower lip, and it looks red and soft as he pants, trying to control his breathing. Julie smiles up at him and waits a while, occasionally reaching out and brushing a finger past the tip of his dick to make him jump and gasp.

“Thank you, Ms. Kane,” he gets out eventually, without prompting, and Julie bites her lip, tasting smeared lipstick and salt.

“Well done, Commander,” she says in return, and smiles at the way the words make him shiver. “How does it feel?”

Director Chilton swallows hard, shifts his weight a little. “Good,” he says, a little higher than normal, a little strangled. “Really good, uh. Can I ask a question ma’am?”

“You want to know how many times I’ll make you wait?”

Director Chilton opens his mouth and then closes it again. “…It…crossed my mind, Ms. Kane.”

“I know, it's not your favorite.” Julie strokes him again once or twice, enjoying how flushed his dick is against the paleness of her hand. The way he tenses in waves as she touches him. “I’ll only do it one more time, if you do your best to hold on as long as you possibly can before you ask me to stop. Sound good?”

Director Chilton licks his lips, makes a soft, helpless little noise that makes heat throb in the pit of Julie’s stomach. “…Thank you Ms. Kane,” he says, and he sounds so genuinely grateful. “I’ll do my best.”

He does, too, waiting until he’s shaking all over and half-sobbing on every breath before he blurts out “I can’t ma'am I _can’t, please—_!” Julie stops immediately this time, and smiles up at him as he sways back against the desk, flushed down to his collarbones, shoulders heaving. His hands twitch, and for a second she thinks she’s going to have to grab his wrists—but he doesn’t try to touch himself, just presses his palms flat against his legs. His hands are shaking with the effort of controlling himself.

“Thank you,” he says again, ragged. “M-Ms.— _hh—_ Kane.”

“How does it feel?”

“Still—good.” His hands grip the edge of her desk, knuckles white, then loosen slowly. “It…aches, ma’am.”

Ah, good. He remembers their talk about withholding information. Well, actually, he probably mostly remembers the discipline that came after the talk—that's fine, though. That object lesson was intended to drive the point home, and it seemed to do its job. Julie’s been very clear with him that he’s not to lie about the things she does to him, and that includes telling her when he starts to hurt. Whether she’s doing it on purpose or not, it’s helpful to know.

“Thanks for telling me,” she says, keeping her voice as steady and composed as possible, and pats his hip comfortingly. He leans into the touch, and his breathing steadies a little. “You waited right up until the last second?”

Director Chilton licks his lips, back straightening a little, at hopeful attention. “Yeah!” he says eagerly, and then clears his throat at the fond, amused look Julie gives him. “I—did, I tried to, yes. Ma’am.”

“I’m sure you did,” says Julie warmly, and strokes a knuckle along his dick, slow and steady, watching him twitch and chew on his lip. “…How do you want me to do this?”

Director Chilton groans softly, head tilting back as he thinks. She can see muscles working in his thighs as he shifts back and forth, still breathing hard. "Can I come over there, ma'am?" he says finally. "I'd like to sit with you."

"You don't have to settle for a handjob," says Julie, faintly amused. "You're doing a really good job, I can do more if you want."

"It's not settling," says Director Chilton, quick and certain. "It's good, ma'am, it's all really, really good." He quirks one corner of his mouth up, a crooked, hopeful half-smile. "...I'd like to kiss you too, though."

Julie has to laugh. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," repeats Mike, smile widening.

"Okay then," Julie says, and reaches out to take his hands, guiding them forward to the arms of her chair. It’s big, made for—somebody a lot bigger than her—and he carefully edges forward and kneels in her lap. Julie hooks her thumbs through his beltloops, frames his narrow hips with both hands and enjoys the view for a second. The white blindfold against the redness of his cheeks and his lower lip, the heave of his chest, the wonderful contrast of his impeccable blue and white uniform against the desperate flush of his dick. His restless fidgeting as he waits eagerly for his reward.

He stops fidgeting abruptly when Julie wraps a hand around the back of his neck, takes a firm handful of his hair and guides him gently down to her. She lays a light peck on his lips, pulls away again and smiles when he struggles to lean forward after her, careless of the pull on his hair.

She lets him lean back down and kiss her, and he groans again and leans back just long enough to mumble something like _“Nnnh thank you Ms. Kane…_ ” before she kisses him for real and he stops talking. Her hands are too dry to start working on him just yet, but there’s enough slick at the head of his dick for her to at least work a thumb in slow circles there, to tease gasps and faint, breathless noises out of him as they kiss.

After a few warm, endless minutes, she brushes just the barest edge of her thumbnail against the sensitive skin and he breaks away with a gasp, bracing himself abruptly on the arms of the chair.

“Ready?” Julie asks, and Director Chilton makes a thin, wanting sound in response, almost a whine. “Mm?”

"Ah—" He jerks, back arching, as she gives his dick a gentle squeeze. "Yes! Yes please, ma’am!”

“Good.” Julie pulls her chair forward, hovering smoothly up to her desk, and reaches around the solid weight in her lap to dig in the drawer again. "Does it still ache?"

"Yes ma'am, worse—but i-it's okay, please, I can take more—"

"Shh, sh." Julie pumps herself a palmful of lube and works it through her fingers slowly, sees his head twitch at the soft, slick sounds behind him. "I know you can. But you're not going to have to."

Director Chilton lets out a long, shuddering noise, braces his weight on the arms of the chair again like she's got him feeling weak. "Thank you, Ms. Kane."

"You're welcome," says Julie serenely, and wraps a hand around his dick. No more teasing, not now—he's been good, and he gets rewarded. That's the deal. She keeps her grip firm, almost too hard, goes fast and rough, and he lets out a cracked noise that echoes around the empty office, hips bucking up into her hand. It doesn't take long after that before he's coming, hands clenched on the arms of her chair to keep himself from muffling his voice, head thrown back and shoulders heaving. He looks amazing, sounds incredible. Julie reaches out with her free hand and guides him down to her, and he goes limp, pressed up against her shoulder.

He's breathing hard, a warm, heavy weight on her chest. Julie wraps an arm around him, and he's much taller and broader than her but she still feels a hot swell of protectiveness spike in her chest as he crumples for her.

He lets himself lie pressed up against her for a few long minutes. Then, finally, he takes a deep breath and sits back up again. Julie strokes his cheek, just once, just to feel him shiver into her hand, and then pulls the blindfold gently off. His eyes still look a little bit hazy, but he can focus on her and smile when she straightens his uniform for him. No sign of tears in his eyes, either. Well, she did go pretty easy. She’ll have to make him really work for it, one of these days.

"Good job, Mike," says Julie, and means it.

"Thanks, ma'am," Director Chilton says, hoarse and warm, and glances down. "Can I...?"

"Go ahead." Julie scoots her butt back in her chair, spreading her legs a little, and Director Chilton groans quietly and slides a hand down her belly, fitting long, rough fingers under the waistband of her slacks. The angle is all wrong, and he has to pull his hand away with a huff of frustration and undo her fly, glancing up briefly for a nod of permission. Then his fingers are slipping up into her, and all the building pleasure that was starting to ease comes rushing back up in a hot, sweet wave. Julie rolls her hips leisurely and Director Chilton licks his lips, eyes dark, and makes quick work of Julie's higher brain functions.

It took her a long time to trust him enough to let him touch her when she was done with him. The whole...jealousy thing...turned most of their early meetings into strange, wary stand-offs, and even after the first rushed, furious time Julie shoved him against the office door and growled at him and Mike went still and wide-eyed and startled—

For a while it was a simple equation of power and loyalty, and that was all Julie wanted out of it, the reassurance that he would do whatever she wanted, that he meant it when he said "you'll have me". When he said " _anything_ , ma'am". And then one day when Julie was almost ready to break under the pressure, when every meeting had been unrelentingly awful and her other directors had ignored or dismissed every idea she tried to discuss, when she felt about ready to either cry or kill something, Director Chilton had come to her office. _Mike_ had come to her office. She'd kissed him hard enough it hurt and he'd kissed her gently back; her lips and her neck and her hands and the top of her head, clumsily combing his fingers through her hair.

Julie repays the favor, now, combing her hands through thick, soft brown hair as Director Chilton braces himself on the arm of the chair, working two fingers into her with fervent care, the broad, warm heel of his hand pressing against her clit. His lips bumps against the top of her head and he turns his head blindly, tries to kiss her cheek and huffs an embarrassed half-laugh when he gets nothing but her hair. Julie reaches up and flicks her hair back for him, then holds onto the back of his neck and guides him in.

It takes her a while, but he's used to that too, now. He knows she needs him because she's stressed, and that it takes her a long time to get off when she's tense and tired, and he works on her steadily until she finally finds the place in her head where she can lean into the touch and just let go. Curls up around his hand, pressing her head to his shoulder, and gasps and moans into his jacket as she shakes herself to pieces.

He leans back against the desk when he's done, giving her space, letting her catch her breath and get herself together. Just watching, eyes dark and cheeks flushed. Julie can tell he would _love_ to get off again, but he doesn't try to push her for it—not in the middle of the day. Always so thoughtful with her time.

Julie smiles at him and Director Chilton immediately smiles back, wide and brilliant, delighted by her unspoken approval.

"...So recruitment was a success," Julie says eventually, and she's proud to hear only a hint of roughness to her voice. "What about those...issues with the Board?"

Director Chilton's smile falls a little, goes wry at the edges. "...They're having another party," he sighs, and rakes his fingers through his bangs. "They invited me again.”

“You should go, this time,” says Julie.

Director Chilton groans. “With…all due respect, ma’am…”

“No, I know, you hate the board,” Julie says, waving the point away. “I hate them too, they’re a bunch of smug dinosaurs. I’m planning on firing one of them a year, probably. On my birthday, it’ll be my present to myself.” She’s rambling, still a little sex-drunk and shaky. Director Chilton blinks and then smiles, and god he’s a handsome guy. Julie got so damn lucky. “…What I’m saying is, you have to spend time around these guys, for now, and you might as well do it somewhere with free drinks.”

“That…” Director Chilton hesitates, then sighs slow and deep. “…That’s a good point, Ms. Kane.”

“Would it help if I gave you an order?” Julie says, without any force, and Director Chilton half-laughs.

“That won’t be necessary, ma’am.”

“I thought you liked it when I gave you orders,” Julie says, and is extremely gratified to see Director Chilton glance at her sharply. It’s hard to tell if he’s blushing or not, but there’s something about the way he shifts his weight, leaning to her a little. She knows he just felt the spark to those words. The potential for more.

Unfortunately, being the CEO of Kane Co. is a lot busier than most Deluxians would probably believe. Julie sighs and lets the moment pass. “Go to your party, Commander,” she says. “Go make some old men jealous.”

—

Mike is on another video broadcast.

Chuck watches it projected over him on a screen, flat on his back in bed in a pair of two-day-old R&D scrubs. Some part of him feels like he should be upset about it, and some part of him is, but mostly he just watches, and thinks. Mike looks really happy these days. He shows up in broadcasts every so often, full of platitudes about Security being _for the people_ and _a great career_ and all the bullshit that got him into the program in the first place. Back when they lived together, when they talked every day.

They don't talk, now. Mike doesn't call Chuck anymore, and Chuck definitely doesn't call him; he used to try sometimes, desperate to hold onto a thread of normalcy as things spiraled out of his control, but then Mike got promoted. _Head of security—_ a member of the Board.

Chuck hasn't talked to him since then. He was almost expecting Mike to be there at the next board luncheon, but it was just...the same people as always. Grear, Webb, Archer, Jones. Carraway. Larsson.

Chuck doesn't know how he feels about that. Some small, desperate part of his brain—the part that's still five years old, hiding behind Mike from bullies—wants Mike to come marching in and pull him out of there, away from the stupid directors and their _stupid_ meetings. The rest of him—the logical pessimist, the exhausted tech—knows better. Nobody is going to just bust into the meeting and throw themselves in front of him. He wouldn't want somebody to take the heat for him anyway, even though...god, even though this is so stupid, even though it's so _fucking_ unfair.

He misses Mike. It hurts, and it's dumb, but he misses him so damn bad. Mike was always in his corner when he and Chuck were kids, when Chuck was weird and nervous and the odd one out. Mike would fight off the bullies, even when he was a Security cadet, one of the bullies by default. He was Chuck's _friend,_ his best friend in the world. But...

But Mike's moved on, now. He's moved on to bigger and better things, like Chuck always knew he was going to, and that's that. There's nothing to do about it, no way to fix it. Mike's gone, and if he still has Chuck's number, he doesn't want to use it. Which means that Chuck’s problems are his own now, and as far as he can see nothing is going to fix those problems, short of a string of miraculous heart attacks for every single member of the Board at once.

Chuck rolls over, presses his face into his pillow, squeezes his eyes shut and wonders idly if he could fall asleep like this. If he'd wake up tomorrow, or if he'd just smother to death peacefully in his sleep.

It's a nice thought. Unrealistic, though. And—he doesn't _want_ to, that would be dumb, that would be them— _winning,_ somehow. But it's a nice thought anyway.

He should get out of bed, probably. Eat, maybe even shower. It's been a couple of days. He should be hungry right now.

He rolls back over again instead, stares up at the ceiling of his pod, and lets his thoughts drift.

He doesn't really fall asleep, but he isn't really awake when a soft _ding_ startles him back to life. Chuck stares up at the ceiling for another long, long second, and then forces himself to sit up in bed, drags his hands down his face and opens up the message on his screen.

Oh. He's ‘invited’ to a party.


	2. anger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A party doesn't go as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please mind the tags for this chapter; the abuse of power/sexual harassment/noncon elements are all implied, not explicitly shown, but this chapter contains the majority of them.

Mike wears his dress uniform to the party that night. It doesn't look all that different from his normal one, but it's an extra layer between him and the way the Board of Directors make his skin feel creepy.

He’s managed to avoid all but the most crucial of board meetings up to this point. He definitely does his job, the best job he can, working as hard as he can for Ms.—for Julie. But weird throat cube luncheons and long, private, catered coffee meetings aren’t a crucial part of his job, and getting to know his fellow directors isn’t high on his list of priorities. One or two of them seem…okay, but they all have this smug sense of entitlement about them that makes Mike’s teeth grind and his skin prickle.

He hasn't even bothered to decline the party invitations. Not showing up makes his feelings about those pretty dang clear, he thinks. But if Julie wants him to, he’ll…give it a shot.

It's about what he expected, when he slips in half an hour after the time on the invitation. Mike walks in, is immediately handed a cup of punch from a tray; he takes it, and backs up to loiter in the corner across from the door, looking around, taking in the lay of the land. The Board of Directors is hanging around at the back of the room in a tight clique, enjoying indulgence cubes and chatting—the rest of the party is underlings and lesser heads of department, wandering around bitching about each other. Every member of the Board has a couple of assistants, slightly younger than the directors but still decades older than Mike; the pod isn't small, but it's very full.

It only takes about five minutes for a handful of those assistants to latch onto Mike. Apparently he's the newest, most interesting director, and they absolutely will not stop trying to talk to him. It would be kind of flattering if it wasn't so completely uncomfortable; they keep trying to get him to talk business, and they have to know he knows they're trying to make him sound like an idiot. Mike spends a lot of time shaking his head and saying "I wouldn't know about that," and counting down the minutes until he can slip back out again.

Across the room, somebody says something about "entertainment", and there's a round of laughter—Mike glances up, but whatever just came through the door has drawn the Board around it like a magnet and Mike can't see.

"Just the directors' private entertainment," says one of the men talking to him, with a dismissive wave of one hand. "Not our business. Now, like I was saying, the budgeting for the security department—"

"Sir," says Mike, with brittle respect, "I handle the military and tactical division of labor, _not_ the budgeting. You would want to talk to Commander Simms, or someone in his office." _Not_ our _business._ In any other context it could theoretically have been a slip of the tongue, an accident, lumping Mike in with the other junior interns and assistants. But in this crowd he knows it was an intentional dig at him. "I'm the Commander-In-Chief, I don't have time to handle training rosters and uniform allocations."

"Oh, well." The man sputters a little bit. "We just thought—"

"So your skills are only military?" Somebody else makes a mock-thoughtful noise. "I think we all assumed that you had...networked your way to the top."

"I've been very fortunate," Mike says firmly—a useful stock phrase, and one he's heard Julie use a bunch of times. God, it's times like this he misses Chuck deep and fierce. He almost tried to call again tonight, but there's something so deeply dispiriting about sitting there, listening to the error tone. He could almost recite it by heart, now. _The contact you are attempting to call has changed addresses or is no longer in the Deluxe system. Please contact your local Kane Co. communications terminal._ He's tried following its advice, and every time the techs there can only shrug and tell him what he already knew. _Not listed. No longer available._

"Well I'm sure, ending up in a position like yours, Ms. Kane must have tried you in quite a few other positions first," says one of the chief assistants of Human Resources, and there's something about the way he's grinning that makes Mike weirdly tense. He shakes off the thought and focuses on the moment again, pulling up another rote phrase.

"Hard work and discipline," he says, a second late, and shrugs. "...It's all about the opportunities you take."

"And the liberties," agrees the HR guy, and that must be some kind of management joke because all the other men in the circle laugh. Mike smiles briefly, just to be polite. "You'll have to tell us all the gory details some time, _Commander._ "

Mike frowns. "I—don't follow," he says, and he means it.

"Oh, don't be modest." Another guy just wandered up, with an HR uniform and a cup of Kanecohol in his hand, and he leans into the conversation with a sloppy grin on his flushed face, leering at Mike. "You're a handsome young man, she's a little on the skinny side but easy enough on the eyes—"

" _Marcus,_ " hisses one of the other men.

"No _wonder_ she wants to keep you on a short leash," the man finishes, self-satisfied and suggestive, and his eyes rake up and down Mike’s body, his grin lopsided and hungry. "...I know I would."

The man who was trying to stop him takes a look at Mike's expression and hastily excuses himself. Mike barely notices him go—he's frozen where he is, staring as he tries to absorb what he just heard. Fit the idea in his head. They think—they know, they guessed, they know Julie...likes him, and they're not wrong, he knows she does _,_ but—but they think that's _all?_ They think Julie promoted him just so she could—just because they—

"She—I got promoted because I _do my job!_ " Mike snaps. His face is on fire. "I'm not— "

"Mr. Kane was the one who did most of the promoting, anyway," asserts one of the guys, and then before Mike can agree, "...Well I'd hate to speak ill of the deceased, but honestly is anybody surprised he was picking favorites from the cadet program?"

It's a punch in the gut. Mike opens and shuts his mouth once or twice, choking on the words, and then bursts out, "—What's _wrong_ with you?!"

"Is there a problem over here, gentlemen?"

It's Director Carraway. The men Mike’s talking to all go quiet—Mike tenses, startled, and resists the urge to whip around. God, for such a freakishly huge guy, Carraway moves _really_ quietly. He looks more like an aging Security bruiser than a Human Resources pencil-pusher—Mike's not a small guy, and he's not accustomed to feeling loomed-over, but Carraway manages it apparently without trying.

“No, sir,” says the drunk guy. His flushed face has gone blotchy. “I’m, I’m sorry, sir.”

“I wasn’t speaking to you,” says Carraway mildly, not mean but definitely not interested in back-talk. The guy shuts up. “Director Chilton, are my _junior_ interns botherin’ you?”

Mike’s met Carraway one-on-one exactly one time. The man had put a hand on his shoulder and said something empty and comforting in that strange, slow, weirdly-accented voice. Mike doesn’t really remember what he said, just that Carraway’s hand had been big and heavy and warm on his shoulder, and he’d called Mike “son”.

That had been at the funeral. And those words had…cut close to home. Mike had shaken his hand off, nodded and walked away from him without answering. Either Carraway doesn’t remember, or he’s not holding a grudge. Mike's not sure whether to be grateful or still furious.

"Director Chilton," says Carraway, and pats his shoulder, a brief, lingering squeeze. "You look all out of sorts, do I need to have a _discussion_ with anybody?" He glances around the circle. "Invitations to these events are a privilege, if they've been abusin' it—"

"No," Mike says, and manages a sort of tight, hard smile. "No, it’s...fine _._ "

"If you say so, Director Chilton," says Carraway, and throws a stern look around at the men Mike was talking to. "I know none of my boys here are tryin' to make trouble for you, or make any _rude assumptions._ Are you now?"

"No, sir," says the drunk guy, and "—Sorry, Director Carraway," the other two mumble. Carraway pats the nearest guy on the back, glances at Mike and smiles.

"Don't let my darlins get you flustered," he says. "You’ve just got everybody curious."

"...Yeah." Mike can't quite manage a smile. "Sure."

The guys who were talking to him scatter. Mike's finally— _finally_ left alone, as Carraway picks up a plate of dessert throat cubes and goes strolling over to the crowd of directors at the back of the room, vanishing into the group, clapping one of the other men on the shoulder. Mike doesn't really like the guy, mostly on principle, but—he can't help but be at least a little bit grateful. For the breathing room, if nothing else.

God, this is the worst. Mike considers briefly going back to his pod, just ditching this stupid party—but no. That would be kind of like...admitting defeat, like they scared him off, and that's not gonna happen. So instead he wanders idly over in the direction of the refreshments table.

There's not a lot of variety available anywhere in Deluxe, but what variety there is, it's all here. Cubes with actual flavors, more cups of punch with artificial sweetener sprinkled in. Mike doesn't exactly have a sweet tooth, but after growing up on standard-issue throat-cubes and purified, fortified water, he'll take any opportunity to try something sweetened. Who knows when he'll get his next chance, especially since he has no intention of coming back to one of these parties.

He's standing over by the table, sipping punch by himself and thinking about Ms. Kane's smile, the way she looked at him earlier that morning when he...helped her out...when somebody nearby laughs, sudden and harsh. "He picks _now_ to come over all quiet?" They say, and more people laugh mean, hard laughs. Mike starts to look around for the source of the noise, frowning, and then shakes it off, breathing slow through his nose. He's not here to gossip and eavesdrop.

He picks up another cup of punch, trying not to listen as the men in the crowd laugh and chatter. It's not easy. They're not exactly trying to keep their voices down.

"Come on now, don't get shy."

"—About due for another cut—"

"Don't give us that look, boy, it's for your own good."

It doesn't sound—who are they talking to? Mike straightens up, frowning, trying to see; there's a pretty tight crowd, closed in in a ring around something. Somebody is standing in the middle—people reach out occasionally, pushing at them, maybe. It's strangely familiar—reminds Mike, abruptly, of being out in the recreation yard during school and seeing a crowd of bullies gathered around their victim. He cranes his neck, trying to get a glimpse of who's in the middle of the circle. That guy looks like he's about to move—if Mike can see past—

It's Chuck.

It's Chuck, it's Mike's best friend, it's been months since Mike got a hold of him but there's no way he's forgotten the face he grew up with. Chuck's standing there, right in front of Mike, surrounded by a circle familiar old men—the founding board of Kane Co., laughing and talking in low voices, crowding in around him. And he's not—and he's—

He's bright red, eyes screwed up; his clothes look all strange. Too tight, cut wrong. They’re pressing in on him from all sides, hiding him from the rest of the room, multiple pairs of hands reaching out to get a hold of him. The head of Resource Management is behind him, pressed up against his back with a hand between his legs, groping and rubbing. With the other hand up under his shirt, doing something that makes Chuck shake and shudder. The head of Information Security has a hand in Chuck's short-cut hair, pulling his head back so everybody can see his face; Carraway rejoins the circle, rests a hand almost gently on Chuck's flushed cheek and then pushes two fingers inexorably into his mouth.

For just a second, Mike stands there, paralyzed. His brain flickers through possibilities, desperately. Chuck's just...sometimes sex is a lot, and sometimes crying is— No, but Chuck's face is bright red, and Mike's seen him take those huge, shuddering breaths before, he's definitely upset. But he's not trying to get away, he's not yelling for help or telling them to stop, it can't be what it looks like, it's not—

Carraway steps forward, closes the circle again with the breadth of his shoulders and blocks Chuck off from Mike's view. But Mike can see him reach forward with his other hand, see his arm work. Whatever he does makes Chuck let out a cracked, protesting cry, strangled and wet around the fingers in his mouth, and the directors are _laughing._

Mike sees red.

Somebody tries to stop him to talk as he crosses the distance—was he always this far away?—to the place the directors are gathered around his best friend, but Mike shoves him out of the way without even bothering to glance at him. He elbows Carraway to one side and the man goes, with a startled grunt. The guy with a hand up Chuck's shirt is saying something as Mike pushes through the circle, hissing in Chuck's ear; something like "— _If we have to punish you to make you entertaining—_ " He looks up, sees Mike coming and pauses, startled at the look on Mike's face.

Mike doesn't bother with words. He reaches out, sees Chuck's eyes fix on his face, round with shock and terror, too bright and wet. Mike can hear his own heartbeat rushing in his ears—he grabs Chuck's upper arms and yanks, wrenching him away from the hungry, groping hands.

"Hey, who do you think you—?" starts the head of Resource Management.

Mike decks him.

The entire party grinds to a halt as the old man hits the ground. Mike is breathing hard through his teeth, heart still pounding like a drum inside his skull. He can't think, he can't breathe. He keeps hearing that _noise_ Chuck made, seeing the terrified, humiliated helplessness in his eyes. He hears his voice like it's coming from a long way away, a hoarse, rising yell. "What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?!"

"What’s going on over here?!" One of the directors is bustling over—Larsson, the head of Chuck's department. For a brief moment Mike thinks he's here to pull the other directors off, but he's glaring at _Mike,_ not at the others, and when Chuck hears his voice he gives a hitching little gasp and shrinks against Mike's side. And then, awfully, he jerks and pulls away from Mike too, head down, hugging himself miserably.

"What's—" Mike mouths for a second, speechless, throws a hand out in Chuck's direction. He wants to keep hitting people. Everybody who was watching, everybody who was laughing, everybody who was _touching_ him. The head of Resource Management—Grear, Mike's never liked him, sarcastic old asshole with a smug grin—is on the ground still, holding his jaw and looking outraged and shell-shocked in equal measures. Mike's hands are clenched so tight they're shaking, nails biting into his palms. "Did you see what they were—?!"

"Harmless entertainment!" Larsson snaps. "There is no call for _violence—_ This is unacceptable, Chilton. I'll have you fired!"

"Sure!" Mike says, recklessly loud with rage. The whole room is murmuring angrily, but he's not scared of them— _any_ of them, they can bring it on, Mike will kick their butts and come back for more. "Yeah, try it! And I'll tell Ms. Kane about your _entertainment!_ I'm pretty sure she'll _love_ that!"

Chuck makes a noise like a faint whimper, starts to reach out for Mike's arm and then pulls back in on himself hastily. "Mikey," he manages, small and breathless and hoarse—and then, like he's correcting himself, "—Please, Mike, don't—"

"What do you mean, _don't?_ " Mike growls. "They were pulling crap like that right in front of me, I'm not supposed to get mad about it?!"

Chuck sniffs hard, swallows—draws some shaky breaths. "I know, I know, sorry, I know, but, please don't tell—"

"Ms. Kane's gonna be _really_ interested in this," Mike says grimly—sees a few of the old men glance at each other, looking distinctly uneasy now. Well _good._ "We can talk to her tonight. I think she'll wanna hear the whole story, don't you?"

" _Sir,_ " says Chuck, and the edge of desperation in his voice is what catches Mike, what makes the words register. For a second he stares, trying to figure out who Chuck is even talking to—but Chuck's looking at _him_ , cheeks still flushed and eyes wet and hands shaking. "Sir," he says again, "Please—"

Mike's stomach turns over queasily. God, what did they _do_ to him? Does he even know who Mike is? Did they do something to his brain? "Don't call me that," he says, harsh with the horror in his guts, and Chuck subsides again, eyes wide.

"Sorry," he mumbles, and rubs his arms convulsively, over and over again. The shirt he's wearing is _almost_ standard-issue Kane Co. employee wear—the collar is just slightly too low, enough for Mike to catch flashes of pale, freckled collarbone and the nape of his neck. Cut just a little bit too tight, clinging at his waist and riding up on one hip no matter how many times he reaches down to tug the hem down. It's...a really good look, except he also looks miserable and self-conscious, eyes wet and lips pressed tight to keep them from trembling. "...S—Director. Director Chilton. Sorry."

Mike wants to—do stupid stuff, hold him, pet his hair. But the Board of Directors is still watching both of them, and Mike's not going to let them watch that. They liked seeing Chuck breaking down and trying not to cry? Well they're not going to see Mike that way. He glares at them instead, staring from face to face, looking for guilt.

"Who touched you?" he says.

Chuck still isn't looking at him—he flinches at the words, reaches up and runs a hand jerkily over his hair, still cropped brutally short. Memory suddenly jabs at Mike—the last conversation he had with Chuck, months ago; the way Chuck couldn't meet his eyes, cheeks hollow and lips tight and hair buzzed close to his scalp. Mike had laughed about it, and Chuck...hadn't laughed with him.

" _Chuck,_ " Mike presses, insistent, horror and anger sharpening his voice. "Who touched you?"

"...You mean, uh..." Chuck swallows hard, takes a shuddering breath. His eyes are still fixed on the floor. "Tonight, or...?"

Mike's entire chest is a vicious, toothy knot. " _Ever_ ," he says, and he can kind of tell as he says it that he's snapping, falling back on military bluntness to ignore the howling storm of rage and panic eating up his chest from the inside out. Chuck's shoulders curl in at the tone of his voice, his arms wrap around himself.

"All of them," he says. His voice is still weird and soft and dead, washed out. "...That was what I— I was a—" He raises a hand, scrubs it at his mouth, sniffs. "Sorry."

"Yeah?" Mike swallows hard, forces himself to keep his voice almost steady. Chuck doesn't need Mike to raise his voice right now, he looks like he's about to pass out. Mike's voice comes out kind of hard and flat with the effort of keeping it low, but that's better than yelling, right? "...How long has this been going on?"

Chuck sniffs again. Reaches up and brushes a palm past his eyes—once, twice. "...Couple months," he says, very quietly.

"A couple," Mike repeats. He can barely hear his voice over the droning in his ears, the rush and pound of his heartbeat. Distantly, he's aware of how miserable Chuck looks, like he's waiting for somebody to hit him—but there’s nothing Mike can do about that right now. Emergencies first, and then—then he’ll do his best to help with whatever awful shit’s happened to his best friend. _God_. "How many months is 'a couple'."

"Just, uh." Chuck gives an uneasy, lopsided shrug. There's a kind of forced, casual tone to his voice, but his face is papery pale and his eyes keep darting over toward the directors and back to Mike's feet. "Fifteen—eighteen, I dunno—"

Mike's head is pounding again. The urge to lash out at something is so strong he's having to fight not to slam a fist against the closest wall—or an old man's face, whichever, he's not picky. He restrains himself, barely, at the thought of the way Chuck would jump and the startled, frightened noise he would make. Eighteen _months._ A year and a half? Since before the succession, since before Mike got promoted—they used to talk all the time, and he never—

"...Why didn't you tell me?" Mike says, and if he had the time he would be proud of how even his voice is right now.

Chuck makes a noise like he's caught halfway between a sob and a laugh. "I..." he starts, and swallows the words, shaking his head. Mouths silently for a second, then manages, "You were a— I thought you'd, be mad, I dunno, they were gonna..."

"Of course I'm _mad,_ " Mike snaps—forces himself under control again. "This isn't okay, dude!"

Chuck nods silently. He's got his arms wrapped around himself, and for a minute Mike really wants to hug him. When he reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder, though, Chuck shudders all over and tenses like he wants to pull away. Mike grits his teeth and forces himself not to do anything...stupid.

"You said all of them touched you," he says, and has to breathe before he manages, "...That's...that's a serious accusation. I need you to tell me what they did."

Chuck hesitates, throws a quick glance around the pod at the interns and assistants watching him and swallows hard. Mike almost forgot they were still being watched—he looks up, gives the men gathered around the edges of the pod a poisonous glare and raises a hand to his comm.

"Locked transport pod to my location," he says, and within ten seconds the nearest empty pod has been rerouted, merging seamlessly onto the window-side of the pod they're in. Mike gives the room another look as the door opens between the two pods, and then jerks his head meaningfully toward it.

"Uh..." says one of the interns cautiously. "Sir?"

"Everybody out," says Mike curtly. "Now."

There's a ripple of uncertain aggravation, people glancing to their supervisors and directors—but the Board doesn't move or respond, and after a few reluctant seconds the pod empties out. Mike watches them go, and then blinks, startled, as Chuck starts to edge past him, eyes fixed on the door, shoulders down. When Mike catches his shoulder he goes still as stone and makes an almost inaudible noise of fear and distress.

"Chuck," says Mike, and squeezes, trying to apologize through the touch without letting the directors see how desperately hurt and lost he feels right now. "Not you."

With his hand on Chuck's shoulder, he can feel Chuck takes three fast, shallow little breaths, rasping on the way in, trembling on the way out. Then Chuck says "...Sorry, Director Chilton _,"_ and shuffles back around, hands working at his sides, head down.

Larsson scoffs to himself and shakes his head, then walks right past Mike, heading for the refreshments table. He almost brushes past Chuck on the way past, and Chuck sucks in a breath, eyes widening. Mike tugs on his arm, harder than he means to, putting himself between Chuck and Larsson. Larsson spares him a derisive look and then picks up a plate of indulgence cubes, demonstratively unconcerned.

"The _boy_ remembers his manners, at least," he says, pointedly, with a vicious look in Mike's direction. "At least someone in this—"

"Sit down," says Mike, and tries—really, just, _really_ hard, not to pull up his comm again and send for his gun. "Now."

"Director Chilton," says Carraway quietly—warm, reasonable. "Ease up on our boy's arm, why don't you? I think you're hurtin' him."

Mike opens his mouth to snarl, then feels the shaking tension of his hand, the way his fingers dig into Chuck's shoulder. He struggles with himself for a second, then loosens his grip and feels Chuck breathe out hard and slow, not quite a groan of relief.

"...Thank you, sir," he says, barely audible, and Mike can't tell if he's talking to Mike or to Carraway, and a sick swell of acid curls in his stomach.

"I think you cracked Will's jaw," says Director Webb. He's one of the younger directors, rich brown skin and a full head of dark hair—a handsome, stern-lined face. He doesn’t look very handsome now. He fixes Mike with a tight-lipped, sneering sort of look, shakes his head. "I told Kane he had no business promoting some—some hotheaded _brat_ —"

It's almost a relief to feel the anger come roaring back. Mike crosses the space between them in three fast strides, knotting one hand in the front of Webb's immaculate vest and hauling him up. " _Don't_ ," he says, through gritted teeth, and it makes a dart of vicious satisfaction shoot through him to see the flash of genuine fear on Webb's face. "Don't even say Mr. Kane's name, I swear, I'm gonna do something we're _both_ gonna regret—"

"Easy, gents," says Carraway, and puts a huge hand on Mike's arm. Mike flinches back, shaking his hand away with furious disgust, and Carraway takes his hand back again immediately, watching him with slow, quiet thoughtfulness.

"Director Chilton," he says again. "You need to come at this with a cool head, before you really do end up regrettin' how this plays out. Be reasonable."

"Be _reasonable?!_ " Mike repeats, breathless with affronted indignation. "Be— You seriously—"

"You're makin' a scene," says Director Carraway quietly, leaning down to lower his voice. God, he's even taller than Chuck, and almost as broad as Mr. Kane was, he's—a lot bigger-looking, up close. Mike lifts his chin and refuses to step back, jaw tight and teeth grinding. "You're embarrassing him, Mike."

Mike was resolved to hold Carraway's eyes, but at that he can't stop himself from glancing over, startled. Sees Chuck huddling in on himself, eyes round and lips pressed into a pale, unhappy line. Watching Mike like he's a bomb that's about to blow.

"I can brief you on the situation," says Carraway, still low and steady, like he's soothing a wild animal. "He's shy, and he knows how this...looks." And Chuck flinches again at the suggestive delicacy of that word, paper-pale face catching a blotchy, red flush. Carraway grimaces at him sympathetically and looks back at Mike, smiling warmly. "...Makin' him talk about it in front of everybody will just make him miserable, bless his heart. We should let him get outta here. Back to his pod, so he can calm down, before all this excitement turns his head."

Mike is opening his mouth, struggling to figure out what to say, when Chuck makes a cracked little noise and steps forward. "B-but—" he blurts out, hoarse and high and scared.

"Now, sweetheart, we're talkin' here," says Carraway, and turns that impenetrable faint smile in Chuck's direction. Chuck falters, eyes flickering from Mike to Carraway and back again. "Mind your manners."

"I," Chuck says convulsively, and swallows hard. "Sorry, I, sorry, sir, I, just—"

"Spit it out if you're going to, boy," snaps Director Archer. He's not a big man, shorter than Mike, but there are hard, bitter lines around his eyes and mouth and a practiced aggravation to the way he looks at Chuck. "I agree with Art, what is he still doing here? This is a dispute between directors, a _coffee boy_ has no business butting in!"

A clamor of agreement rises from the other directors, voices overlapping and bouncing off the walls, and Chuck looks crushed and awful and totally miserable, and Carraway is still saying things like "be reasonable" and "there are easier ways to resolve this" like they're arguing over a staffing disagreement, and Mike can feel something winding up tighter and tighter inside him.

"Stop," he says, but it comes out so quiet and flat, the noise swallows the word. The thing inside his chest is still growing and swelling and _snarling,_ something hot and toothy. "—I said— _SHUT UP!_ "

The Board goes silent for a stunned second. Mike stares around at them all, breathing hard, and then straightens his spine and raises his chin again, taking the room back.

"Chuck," he says, as composed as he can bring himself to be. "What were you saying?"

"...Ah," says Carraway thoughtfully. Tilts his head a little on one side, looking from Mike to Chuck and back again. Chuck had shifted when Mike said his name—he goes still again, watchful and wary, as Carraway watches them. "Hm."

" _What?"_ Mike snaps.

"Oh, nothin'," Carraway says, and his smile has a knowing edge to it this time. "Should've realized you were... _familiar_ with the boy. We edge in on your hunting ground, Director Chilton?"

Chuck makes a crushed little noise. One of the directors snorts and then all of them are laughing, hard and cruel. It feels like being young again, like a circle of bigger, meaner kids all around them, except...

Except instead of Chuck pressing up against Mike, shaking but still trying to be brave, he's standing alone and small, barely reacting as they laugh at him. He's not even looking at Mike, like it doesn't even occur to him that Mike would help him, now, still, _always_.

"...The next person who talks out of line," says Mike, loud and clear and cold, "—is going in a muted detention cube until I clean up this mess. I'm not bluffing."

"I don't think—" starts Director Jones nervously, rubbing a thumb nervously past his scrubby, iron-grey goatee—and then falters as Mike glares at him, points a finger and snaps sharply.

The executive implants are still new, still...incredibly bizarre. Mike can feel the tower systems read the movement of his hand, the tower itself bending and shifting to follow his orders, and the power rush is as dizzying as it is terrifying. A shimmering red field rises on every side of Director Jones, turning his yelp of shock muffled and echoing as it closes over him, a self-contained prison cell. Mike flicks a hand, and the detention cube hovers up and across the room to sit neatly in the corner.

God, that feels good. Mike deeply considers just...doing that a couple more times, and then maybe pulling Chuck away somewhere else, where he can hold onto him and apologize and reassure him he's never going to get hurt like that again—except dammit he's a _director_ , he's Ms. Kane's eyes and hands in this situation and he needs to know what he's working with. Needs to know if Chuck remembers him, if Chuck's hurt, if it's really as bad as it looked like it was—and god Mike hopes it isn't, but there's a cold certainty in his gut.

"Chuck," he says, again, finally, and the directors glare but don't interrupt, this time. "What were you going to say?"

—

This is it, the worst-case scenario.

Chuck's had literal nightmares about this. The directors all watching him, Mike front and center—Larsson is glaring at Chuck like a predator watching its next meal, and it makes the old, healing welts across Chuck's shoulders itch and burn. And Mike's... _angry,_ angry like Chuck's never seen him before, snapping out orders with cold, brief authority, locking up a _director_ for back-talking him. Chuck opens his mouth, resists the urge to say anything—out of turn, anything stupid.

"Sir," he says, and then winces. Fucked it up already, Mike said he doesn't want to be called 'sir'. "I, I mean, Director Chilton, I, don't need to leave, I-I'm...I'd like to stay, here, if I can. Please."

Mike frowns, eyes focused on Chuck's face with awful intensity. Scanning, judging, trying to read him. "Here?" he says, and throws a glance at the directors, lip twisting, then back to Chuck. He looks...frustrated? Or hurt? Chuck swallows hard, trying desperately to read that look, trying to think through the racing throb of panic at the back of his mind. Trying to think of a way to say _if I let them talk to you alone they'll show you the videos, they'll tell you I wanted it, they'll_ lie—

"With—with you," he blurts out, desperate, and sees a crack in Mike's cold outrage. He looks—maybe, for a second, he looked interested? Chuck takes a very careful step forward, hopeful, and Mike doesn't look affronted or tense up or twitch a hand like Larsson sometimes does, _watch it or you'll feel the back of my hand, boy._ He just watches Chuck, going still, face unreadable. "I want to stay with you, M—Director. Chilton. Please?"

Archer makes a soft, scathing noise, and Chuck can feel humiliated heat bloom across his face as Mike twitches, glancing over, eyes scanning the old men’s faces before going back to staring at Chuck like he's something weird and incomprehensible and a little disturbing.

Chuck can't blame him, either of them—he knows he's being pathetic, it's just that he doesn't have an alternative he can see. If Mike decides he wants—if he'll have Chuck, Mike's got to be better than the entire rest of the Board combined, right? No matter how much he's changed, he's still _Mike._ And...even if he's not, even if Kane turned him into something awful, there's only one of him. He's pretty busy, probably, busy enough he never came to the coffee lunches before. He wouldn't have much time to...do things.

Mike holds Chuck's gaze for a long minute, then reaches up and presses a hand over his eyes like he's got a headache, sighing through his nose. Chuck swallows and essays a careful step back, giving him space. Mike doesn't seem to notice; he stands there for a few seconds, letting out that long, tired sigh, and then takes his hand away from his eyes and stands up straight. "Okay," he says carefully, almost delicately. "That's. Good to know."

Chuck's heart leaps up into his throat. He dares to smile, just a little, and Mike doesn't quite smile back but his expression of exhausted anger softens slightly. He looks back at the directors, raises his chin again and abruptly that hint of softness is gone. "...What did they do?"

God, okay. Okay, _god,_ okay. Chuck could almost laugh if he didn't feel so much like he was going to throw up. But...it's not like Mike's respect for him was even on the table anymore. They covered that, they're way past that point; Mike's moved up in the world, and he's alright with Chuck sticking to him if it stays worth his while, but it's not like Mike's going to ever look at him the same way again. If he's already on Chuck's side, even a little—if he's mad at the directors, even just for being inappropriate at a public event—Chuck might as well bring it all out into the light, and at least try to bring some of these awful old bastards down with him.

"Chuck?" says Mike, almost gently, and the dam breaks.

"Larsson—" Chuck blurts out, fast and blunt with no preamble, and chokes on the name. He tries again, forcing the words out one after another in a long, flat rush. "Larsson likes hurting me, hurting people. He's been taking—taking guys from R&D for meetings, and, and _private use_ — He can just grab people for a 'performance review' any time he wants and—do. Things." He can see Larsson's face darkening, furious and hateful, affronted to have his 'entertainment' publicized. Chuck swallows, swallows again, fighting the rise of bile in the back of his throat. "He says he—" The words drag in his throat like broken glass. Chuck sucks in a breath raggedly. "He likes _pretty boys._ Hurting pretty boys."

"Now, see here," starts Larsson, swelling up with fury, but Carraway is chuckling softly, shaking his head.

"You shouldn't've been so hard on the boy," he says, still half-laughing, and gives Larsson the same warm, amused smile. Always the same smile. "Not surprised he's sore at you, Emmanuel. He's got you dead to rights."

"Oh, _you're_ one to talk!" Larsson snarls. The other directors are shifting uneasily, darting unhappy looks in Carraway's direction now—they look just as surprised as Chuck feels, to hear Carraway's tacit confirmation of Chuck's story. Mike raises a hand, poised to pull up another detention cube—the directors falter, glaring at him mutinously, and Mike glances back at Chuck in silent, inexorable expectation.

It's easier to babble, letting the words come out too fast and falling over themselves, than it is to try to pull himself together—and Chuck has to say his piece, he _has to._ He has to tell Mike his side of things before the directors can get to him and convince him Chuck liked it, secretly, he asked for it, see, he _begged_ —

"Webb's got video," he blurts out, at that thought, and sees Mike's eyes widen and then narrow, and hopes to god that it's in shock, not in sudden interest. "Blackmail, he was going to send it out if I—" No, better not to mention that, not if he wants Mike to still want him. Better not to imply he had plans of rocking the boat, when his sway with Mike is so tenuous as is. "Grear took...things, he sent things—toys, to the department, and brought them to meetings—”

"Like you didn't enjoy them," Grear sneers, and then draws back a little at the look Mike gives him. His lip is split; so are Mike's knuckles. But Grear's a bastard and he never knows when to back down, and if he keeps talking he might say something about—clamps, and plugs, exactly what kind of _toys_ Grear managed to get his hands on _._

"Archer just liked getting me in trouble," Chuck rushes on, before Grear can keep going. "So the others could punish me, so, so Larsson could, usually, uh. Jones didn't care, whatever they did, he just ignored it—" he'd been so hopeful at first, when one of them waved him off instead of touching him, but Jones never made any move to stop his coworkers from playing their 'games'. Just watched, unsympathetic and blank, watching Chuck's mouth or chest or past his shoulder but never meeting his eyes.

And then there was...

"Go on, darlin'," says Carraway, and smiles pleasant and mild, head a little on one side. He looks as friendly and warm as the first time Chuck ever saw him, laughter lines crinkling his eyes and the corners of his mouth. "I know you're upset, just get it out. You'll feel a little better."

Chuck's stomach turns. The sudden uncertainty is worse than the dread—Carraway's smile is utterly unreadable, and all of a sudden he's back in the board room, a big hand rubbing his back, a voice murmuring so close to his ear he could feel breath on his skin—he's got choices, options, but every choice is a bad one and every option he's offered is one Carraway wants—

Chuck stands there and shakes, trying to breathe and failing. Following orders and telling Mike what the other directors did is...not easy, but straightforward. They don't want Chuck to talk about it, and he _hates_ them, he wants them to never touch somebody like that again. It's terrifying to talk about, but he knows he has to. But Carraway is backing him up, encouraging him, and that more than anything makes every instinct Chuck's got scream _DANGER, STOP, DON'T._ Doing what Carraway wants him to has never led to anything he wanted, or wanted to enjoy. Even when it looks like he chose right, even when he can't see the sting in the tail, it's always there, somewhere.

"Chuck?"

Mike's hand lands on Chuck's shoulder, and he snaps back to himself and realizes he's breathing hard, fast and harsh. Mike is watching him, looking disturbed—concerned? And Carraway is still smiling, like he knows what he's doing, like he loves it.

"Chuck," Mike says again, firmer this time.

"I know!" Chuck gets out, squeaky and breathless. "Sorry, I know, I, sorry Director Chilton, sir, I just, uh..."

Mike waits for a second, then makes a soft noise, too brief to read. _"_ Did he _touch_ you?"

There's no question about that. Chuck drops his eyes to the ground and nods. Mike makes another quiet noise and his grip works on Chuck's shoulder like he wants to pull his hand away. Chuck wouldn't blame him. He hates how he feels after they're done with him, takes showers as long as his water allowance can afford and scrubs so hard his skin burns. He still doesn't feel clean afterwards, sometimes. He's not surprised Mike feels the same way.

Fuck, what if—what if the more he knows the less he wants Chuck, after all? What if he lets him go again? The directors might not be allowed to pull people into their meetings anymore, but they'd find ways to make Chuck pay for this, if he's not under Mike's protection. Even under Mike's protection, they're going to have it out for Chuck for the rest of his life.

"You don't want to tell me what he did," Mike says.

It's a blank statement. Chuck hesitates, not sure if he's got the right answer, if there _is_ a right answer—and then nods. Mike breathes out, a long, frustrated sigh, and Chuck huddles in on himself.

"Did he hurt you?"

No, not...really, not much. It would almost have been better if he had. Chuck gives a kind of half-hearted shrug, shakes his head.

"Chuck, _talk_ to me."

"Dunno," Chuck mumbles. "Just, he was— He— I dunno. Sir. Sorry. Director Chilton."

"Okay," says Mike, and turns away again. "...Carraway. You wanna tell me what you did that's got him so freaked out he can't answer me?"

"No!" Chuck says, before Carraway can even answer. The horror is like an electric shock—if Carraway tells him, he'll twist it around and make it sound like Chuck liked it, he always does. He never _stops._ "I can, I swear, I'm sorry, I will, just—it's just hard to—"

"You don't have to," Mike says. "I wanna hear it from him. I wanna hear what the hell he thinks—"

"No," Chuck repeats—winces at the taste of the word in his mouth, already hunching in on himself in anticipation of punishment. They were friends, they...used to be, but Mike is something different now. A _director_ . Chuck swallows hard, feels sweat bead cold on his back and prays Mike still feels enough nostalgic fondness—or even enough interest, enough detached lust, for him to fall on Chuck's side and have some mercy. " _Please_ ," he says. ( _Remember your manners, boy, you'll speak with_ respect _when you address your betters.)_ "Please, no. I'll tell you, I swear, please. Just. Not here, not in front of..."

There's a long, quiet second. Then Mike breathes out slowly. "...Larsson was taking people for this? His own men?"

That sounds...promising, good, it doesn't sound like he blames the other techs for it. Chuck licks his lips nervously. Nods.

"I'm within my rights to utilize my employees as I see _fit!_ " Larsson snarls, and pushes himself out of his chair, pulling himself to his full height—and then rounding on Carraway, incensed. "And I may have dealt out some discipline but at least I never bent the help over my _desk,_ Arthur."

Chuck's stomach plummets like a rock—and then, somehow, manages to plummet further as Mike's hand on his shoulder clenches so hard it hurts again. His grip is strong, mercilessly angry—it _aches_.

"...What," says Mike, dangerously quiet.

"I'm sorry," Chuck blurts out. Carraway doesn't look upset by the accusation, but his smile has gone kind of...still, and that look is even worse than Larsson's anger, Grear's wicked delight, Webb's casual, lazy appreciation. Chuck's body is spinning out of his control, tears burning in his throat and hands shaking and stomach churning. He has to stay with Director Chilton, he _has to,_ fuck, that _look_ in Carraway's eyes. "I asked him not to—"

"I think you'll find it was the exact _opposite,_ " Carraway cuts in smoothly, and the sound of his voice makes Chuck's throat knot up, words choking off in a strangled little gasp. God, Carraway's so angry and it's going to be so bad, he's _so angry_ and he's going to make Chuck pay for it— He smiles at Larsson, every line of his face a friendly threat, and then looks back to Chuck and leans his chin on one hand, smile going thoughtful, two heavy fingers tapping slowly against his jaw. "And I know you're stressed, doll, but I don't appreciate being framed as the villain here when all I did was give you what you were asking for." He quirks his head, raises his eyebrows like he's inviting them all in on a joke, but his eyes are fixed on Chuck's face, crinkled with laughter lines, sharp and hard as flint. "... _Begging_ for, actually."

"That's what happened, huh?" Mike's voice is cold and flat. Chuck wants to curl into a ball and fucking _die,_ he just wants to die now and not be here in front of everybody talking about this.

"That's absolutely what happened," says Carraway mildly, not fazed by the icy tone. He still hasn't taken his eyes off of Chuck's face. "Would you like me to play the recordings for Director Chilton, sweet thing? Because I can."

The pet name makes Chuck flinch again, brings back an awful rush of that smile, those hands, all the little punishments and games and cruelties he couldn't figure out how to avoid. The "rewards" that were almost as bad. It's hard to focus on what's in front of him, to see the office pod instead of the board meeting room, it's hard to think past the pounding rush of Chuck's heartbeat in his ears. He can feel Mike's fingers digging into his shoulder, aching; he focuses on that, and just on that, and forces the words out one at a time.

"I...asked you to stop," Chuck says again, too small and too shaky. His tongue feels thick and heavy in his mouth, the words that were spilling out of him have dried up to stammered nonsense. "And you. And you made it my fault, you _made me_ ask for more."

"I'd believe it," Larsson contributes. "You always did like to play with your food, Carraway."

"I'm not the one who beat our boy black and blue for moaning too loud," Carraway says, and his voice is mild but his smile is slipping, perfect except for those cold, cold eyes. The tone of his voice is familiar, too familiar and awful. Chuck's only heard him genuinely angry once or twice, but those times are burned into his memory. " _You_ always did like to see a good-looking young man crying and begging you to stop, _Emmanuel._ "

" _Stop_." Director Chilton's voice is a whiplash. "Just stop! Chuck, you should... You should go. I'll come get you when I've handled this."

Dammit, no no _no_. "Sir—"

"You don't need to listen to these guys," says Director Chilton, and snaps his fingers. The tower gives a soft thrum, an omnipresent soft noise of response, and within a second there's an empty pod docking. "Get outta here. I'll come get you."

"But—"

"Chuck," Director Chilton says, steady and authoritative, and half-turns to look at Chuck over his shoulder. It's a familiar face, but the look on it...isn't. Jaw tight and eyes cold, head held high. " _I'll come get you_."

It's final. Chuck swallows what he was going to say, forces the tears back down his throat and nods jerkily.

"Yes, sir," he mumbles, and does as he's told.

The pod un-docks as the door closes behind him, hovering up to a few hundred feet above the tower. Deluxe stretches away on every side, a vast, white field of pearly-white spires; above the docked buildings, the slow, rotating cloud of pods twist and spread and flow in their intricate, spinning patterns. After curfew, every pod overrides to its tower position, or to fly in its assigned holding pattern; it's all programmed, all pre-determined, and Chuck's seen the program charts but he's never been high enough management to fly up here, to see the tiny, gleaming points of them. They're beautiful, mathematically perfect, spectacular in intricacy, and the view is breathtaking.

Chuck can't really enjoy it, because as soon as the door closes, his legs go out from under him. He's still halfway to a panic attack, has been since they started groping him at the party, and by the time he manages to flail his arms and legs to where they need to be he's already hitting the ground, hard and painful, crumpling like a falling house of cards.

It's over, his life is _over._ The directors are going to do exactly what they said they would; show their videos, their recordings, change Director Chilton's mind, convince him it was— _just a little fun,_ it was just Chuck being _shy_ , it was—he'll be lucky if he doesn't end up back in a meeting serving drinks by the end of the week, and they'll make him pay for this until he wishes he was dead and he _can't, he can't, he can't, he CAN'T—_

He pulls up a screen and tests the permissions on the pod he's in—can't make it move, of course, it's a fucking _prison pod_ summoned by a director, after curfew, there's no way he can override it without setting off every alarm bell in the system. Chuck breathes, hands raised, watching them shake like he's outside his body, then banishes the pod interface screen with a jerky wave of his hand and pulls up the work group chat instead. His handle is still the generic one; his privileges got revoked months ago, a few hours before they cut his hair, and it's not like he's going to send a request to get them back.

 _technician_337913_ : gusyfs help i need help

 _technician_337913_ : i gtta get otof here like now right now

It only takes a few seconds for people to blink online, but it feels like a thousand years. Chuck cranes his neck, trying to see the part of the tower he came from, to see if there are any other pods docking or if he can see anybody through the window—the tower is a blank, forbidding spire. He can't even tell where the party was, let alone what's happening in there.

 _stopcallingmedad:_ slow down kid wtf are you talking about?

Chuck hasn't been to work in days, he's kind of distantly unsurprised his supervisor is the first person to answer when he suddenly shows up in the chat. He doesn't have the brain cells to think much about it, though; he's so _angry,_ he's so fucking scared, the sound of his own breathing is bouncing back at him off the walls.

 _technician_337913_ : WHTAT DO YOU THIN KIM FUCKING TALKNG AB

Anybody he's friends with in the department, he knows they all know. Chuck didn't tell them, but...vanishing weekly, coming back late and shaky and miserable in those stupid, tight clothes—Larsson personally dragging him up to the chop shop... They know. The other techs have tried to offer help as much as they can, since it started, but there's really nothing they can do. The Board has their hands in everything, their eyes everywhere. Apart from the CEO, there's no higher power.

Chuck's comm rings. Chuck stares at it blankly for a second, and then apparently somebody on the other side gets tired of waiting, because it picks up without any intervention from him, pulling up a video call.

"Shit, kid," says Ben, as soon as he sees Chuck's face. "Fuck."

Chuck is abruptly aware what he has to look like, pale and blotchy, eyes swollen and face horrible and puffy. He ducks his head, scrubbing at his eyes like he can make that whole mess look any better.

"Okay, talk to me," says Ben, and then glances over at something off-screen. "—Raoul! Hey. Get in here."

"I need to go call—" says the voice of Chuck's other supervisor, and then Ben reaches out and snags his arm, and Raoul goes "—Oh," and then "Chuck, what happened?"

"You know what happened," Ben growls, and crosses his arms over his broad chest, expression thunderous. He's got some project screens up, and they throw a pale yellow light across the side of his face, turning his dark skin gold and casting sharp, intimidating shadows across his features. "Doesn't matter what they did, kid, what do you _need?_ "

"I can't," Chuck says, fractured gasps of words. "I gotta— I can't be, here, anymore, I gotta get out—"

" _Careful_ ," Raoul murmurs, throwing a cautious look over his shoulder. "Look— If you need a change of scenery that bad, we can probably find a way to _transfer_ you." A second of sharp eye-contact. God, right, comm link, not private. Don't know who's listening. Chuck sucks in another breath, tries to let it out slower—he can't blow this, he can't get them caught. Ms. Kane may have put her dad's war on hold when she took over, but that doesn't mean people can just quit KaneCo and move to Motorcity now.

"Yes," Chuck says, and it comes out tiny and shaky, stupidly young-sounding. "...Yeah. Please."

Ben and Raoul make a second of eye contact with each other; Raoul looks upset and uncertain, reaching up to comb a hand nervously through his dark hair—dark and wavy and long enough to make something hot and awful and jealous pang in Chuck's chest. Ben's face is still blank and hard, a muscle working in his jaw.

"We can't do it yet, though," says Ben finally, brief and tight. "There's...stuff to set up."

"I know," says Chuck. Just talking about it, the possibility of escape, somebody being willing to help him—it's making it better. Helping him focus. "I, yeah. Department transfer. Takes time. I know."

"Chuck!"

Another call pushes Ben and Raoul's to one side—another tech, golden-tan with bright blue-green hair and wide, worried grey eyes. He sees Chuck's face, and it's kind of awful watching him transparently go from worry to realization to distress to anger.

"Liam," says Chuck weakly. "Uh."

"Oh my god!" says Liam, at the top of his lungs, and hurtles up out of his chair, eyes blazing. Chuck's seen Liam yell at Security Elites and Commanders on anger like that, stand between other techs and cadets twice his size, and some part of Chuck goes pained and warm even as the rest of him knots up with dread. "—Those filthy old— I'm going to come up there and—"

"No you're not, Beaker," says Ben grimly, "—Nobody will be any better off if you get yourself thrown off the tower."

"I could take a dirty old man or two down with me!" Liam says, and stands up to pace his cubicle furiously, all five-foot-three of him alive with righteous fury. "This is— I'm so— Hon, did they hurt you? What's going on?"

"I'm fine," says Chuck weakly, against all evidence to the contrary. The mental image of Liam coming storming in and trying to fist-fight the Board is...really something, but the thought of the immediate aftermath makes Chuck's stomach twist in on itself. God, Carraway's got more than a foot and a half on the guy, he could probably lift Liam off the ground with one hand. "Seriously, don't—don't, okay?"

"I bet I can get Rich to help!" says Liam, but his pacing is slowing, the fury is giving way to a familiar miserable frustration without something to vent itself on. "He's big enough, we could— Ah, _fuck."_ He comes back to his desk, drops down into it and looks Chuck over again, brushing the bright blue sweep of his hair away from his face. " _Chuck."_

"I might..." Chuck swallows, licks dry lips. "I might have...a way to keep them off my back. While you work on my, uh. Transfer."

Ben must hear the reluctance in his voice, because he looks up sharply, eyes narrowing. "What do you mean, ' _a way'."_

"Director Chilton," says Chuck. "He. He found out. Just now." Just thinking about it is bringing the panic boiling up in his chest. The memory of Mike's voice, hard and furious, the strength in his hands when he yanked Chuck around by the arm, the effortless way he dismissed the other directors. Chuck takes a few sharp, shallow breaths, squeezes his eyes shut and tries again.

"I might be able to—" he can't say _get him to keep me,_ can't make himself say the words. "...He might keep them off me if I...stick with him," Chuck says instead, mumbling, and hears Ben snarl softly, Raoul's hissing sigh, Liam groaning faintly. "Until we figure something out."

"Did he say that?" Ben says heavily.

God, it would be better if he had. Chuck shakes his head. "I still gotta...convince him," he says, barely audible. He can't look up and see what their faces do at that. "Just—if I don't come back to the department tonight—"

" _Hon,_ " says Liam, hoarse and devastated.

" _If I don't come back down,_ " Chuck presses, forcing his voice not to shake. "Just—keep working on that transfer, okay? I'm not..."

He can't finish the sentence—doesn't even really know what he wants to say. He's still struggling to figure it out when he feels a faint shudder in the floor of the pod as the repulsors shift, and the thought drops right out of his head.

The pod is moving again. Gliding smoothly down and around the tower, following some pre-determined course, and Chuck would _bet_ he knows who determined it. He swallows, breathing fast and hard again, looks back down at the screen, and sees the other techs watching him, fear and frustration and sympathy and hurt in their faces. Chuck offers them a weak attempt at a smile, and Ben curses under his breath, Raoul closes his eyes, Liam covers his mouth and swallows hard.

"See you," says Chuck, and ends the call.


	3. bargaining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck gets what he wants.

Once he's alone, the panic comes back full force. Chuck fights it back, swallows a sob, and then tries to push himself up and yelps in shock as his legs completely fail to support him. He can't be huddled on the floor when Director Chilton comes in, he's trying to get Mike to keep him around, he can't be a pathetic mess—

"Chuck!" says Mike's voice, somewhere overhead, and Chuck chokes on air, shock and terror sending him scrambling back. Mike is standing in the door, staring at him—Chuck makes a croaky noise, squeaky and startled, then tries to get up again, manages to get halfway up and has to stop there, wheezing. He didn't even hear Mike come in, he wasn't ready, he's not ready, he doesn't want—

"Chuck," says Director Chilton again, and his hands come into Chuck's peripheral vision, reaching out, not quite touching. "Chuck—hey, dude—"

"Sorry," says Chuck desperately, tries to lever himself up onto his feet and then stiffens, sucking in a breath, as Mike takes a hold of his arm again. Mike doesn't squeeze this time, though—he pulls a little, gently, guides Chuck over to the wall and snaps his fingers, and the floor unfolds into a hover-couch. Chuck collapses down onto it, still gasping, struggling to get himself back under control.

"Sorry," he says again, thready and small, "—Sorry, Director—"

" _Chuck_ ," says Director Chilton, not like he's angry, but still too loud and intense, full of some feeling Chuck can't parse. Chuck goes still, swallowing more apologies, waiting for Mike to tell him what he did wrong.

Mike takes a couple of seconds to say anything, though. He reaches out and puts a hand on Chuck's hair, the place people were pulling on it tonight. It's sore, but Chuck holds perfectly still and doesn't flinch. Waits, barely breathing.

"Chuck," says Director Chilton again, lower and softer, and—oh, runs his hand over Chuck's hair, petting him awkwardly, rubbing a rough, warm hand at the back of his neck. That's good, that's a good sign, that's not something you do if you're repulsed by somebody. "You don't have to call me that, okay? You can just call me Mike, it's just—it's just me, it's Mike."

That's...unexpected, a weird angle, but okay. Okay, he can do that. It might be easier anyway. "Sorry, Mike," Chuck mumbles obediently, and is horrified to hear his voice crack on the name. It's all just...a lot, and usually after the directors are done with him they leave him alone and he can break down in peace, but this time Mike's just...here, and probably not going anywhere soon.

Chuck swallows the tears, but they just keep burning back up in his throat, and his breath keeps shuddering on every exhale. Carraway always liked when he cried, liked petting him and soothing him until the tears stopped and then working him back up to tears again, but Mike's...not like Carraway. God, please don't let him be like Carraway.

"Buddy, hey," Mike says, and strokes the back of his neck again. Chuck's gut twists, clenching up tight like a fist. His brain is an empty buzz like the static from a florescent light, a numb drone of horror as he waits for the other shoe to drop. "Chuck, look at me. Do you..." Mike swallows, hesitates. "...Do you know who I am? Do you remember me?"

Chuck...doesn't know the right answer, for that. He knows Mike, he... _knew_ Mike. He remembers a goofy kid pulling stupid stunts, dragging Chuck into trouble and then getting him back out again. Chuck's friend, his _best_ friend. But that was Mike _,_ and this is...Director Chilton. And no matter what he wants Chuck to call him, that won't— _can't_ —change.

"I know who you are," says Chuck quietly. "I remember."

Mike's eyes search his face, his hand squeezes on the back of Chuck's neck. "Just," he starts, and stops again. "You still look..."

Chuck doesn't know how he looks, but if it's making Mike look like that, it's probably not the right way. He forces his expression blank and steady, tries to wipe out any trace of the quiet, throbbing misery taking up residence under his ribs. Mike doesn't look happy, though—nothing makes him look happy, everything Chuck does seems to make him more and more unhappy and he doesn't know how to fix it.

Chuck never...showed any initiative, at the meetings. He never wanted to. Never wanted the directors to like him, or want him any more than they already did—but Mike seems sympathetic, he's right up in Chuck's space, maybe he'll like...

Chuck kisses him, and for a second Director Chilton actually yields for him, makes a strange, small noise in his chest, hands going tight on Chuck's arms. Maybe he likes that? Maybe that's right, maybe Chuck guessed right. Chuck kisses him harder, emboldened, insinuates himself hopefully closer and presses up against Mike's chest, trying to get their hips lined up—

"Wait, hey, wait wait wait," Mike gasps, and pulls back. "Dude, is this, are you okay? Is this...okay?"

Is it supposed to be? That was definitely never the point before, Chuck was always just supposed to be pointlessly distressed, _so cute, darlin',_ or shaking and struggling, _control yourself, boy._ He's completely, awfully aware that if the Board had thought he was enjoying himself, they would probably have lost interest. He thought about faking it, once or twice, but even if the idea hadn't filled him with awful, crippling shame, the thought of being caught pretending, _lying..._ Larsson probably would have belted him again.

But Director Chilton is different, a different kind of director. Chuck can already tell it would be way easier to pretend, with him—and he might want that, expect it. Maybe he likes it when people act like they want him instead.

Chuck swallows, licking his lips, and then nods hesitantly, hopefully. Mike takes a brief, shuddery breath, eyes darting over his face. "I," he says, like he's torn, wavering. "Buddy, are you—"

"Mike," says Chuck, hoarse and dry-mouthed, and tries to smile, tries to let that shivering hope in his chest come out in his voice. Tries to let it overwhelm the fear. "Please?"

Mike searches his face for another second, and then reaches out slowly and touches Chuck's head, his hair, brushing a rough palm carefully over the curve of his skull again. He telegraphs it, which is good, because it gives Chuck time to brace for it; when Mike touches him, Chuck makes himself lean into it instead of twitching away. Forces himself not to shudder at the sting from his sore scalp.

"You're—upset, dude," Director Chilton says, like it's taking him an effort. "You're not—I don't want you to do anything you're gonna regret later, is all— _mmh_!"

Chuck kisses him hard—kisses him harder, when that makes Director Chilton groan faintly into his mouth. Mike would always get twitchy and breathless after a fight, punch-drunk, grabbing Chuck to wrestle with him and then vanishing into the hygiene pod for a suspiciously long shower. He's twitchy the same way now, heart racing when Chuck puts a hand on his chest, breath coming fast. The back of his neck feels feverishly hot, and when they break apart to catch a few breaths Chuck realizes it's because Mike is _blushing,_ a soft red flush diffusing across his skin like spilled ink.

And then Mike blinks and straightens, some kind of realization flashing behind his eyes. "—Wait," he says, "—no, wait, what am I doing? This isn't what I— Here, get up."

"What?" Chuck blurts out, before his self-preservation instincts can stop him. "Why?!"

"I can't sit here and—and—" Mike catches on the word, swallows, pushes past it. "—I've gotta tell Ms. Kane!"

Chuck's internal organs solidify into a lump of pure lead. "Ahh-ha," he says, more a whimper than a laugh, "I, but, sir, but— _Mike_ — Please, I swear I can be—"

"Can you stand up?" says Director Chilton, talking over him—that frantic energy has shifted, changed focus, and he's not listening anymore. "Come on...here, c'mere." He gets a hold of Chuck's arms and pulls, and Chuck wobbles and sways to his feet, knees still weak, breathing fast and hard as he tries to find the words—tries to figure out how to beg without making it too pathetic, how to sway him without being too obvious.

The pod is docked. Most of the time it's hard to tell where you're docking on the tower from the outside, but there's no way to mistake this one. The top floor, the CEO block. Chuck staggers, resisting the urge to dig in his heels. "Sir," he says again, and hates how his voice sounds, thin and crushed and pitiful. "...Sir please, I— Please don't make me do this."

He flinches as soon as the words escape, regretting them instantly. Asking not to do something is a good way to get punished, to be forced to do it even more, to get _recorded_ doing it so they can rub it in his face—but Mike falters.

"Chuckles," he says, and Chuck feels the nickname like a stab, has to swallow a startled, cracked little noise. Director Chilton touches his shoulder again, and the touch feels like it burns. "We've gotta tell her. I know it's—I know, dude, but we _have to._ "

Chuck keeps himself from saying anything stupid, but he can't stop himself from huddling in on himself, shaking his head helplessly. Even that much denial feels dangerous, too much, makes the healing welts on his back and shoulders burn again. But Director Chilton doesn't threaten him or yell or even snap at him—he sighs, takes Chuck's shoulder again and gives it a gentle pull.

"I'll...take care of you," he says, slow and quiet. "I'll take care of you, this time. Now. Okay?"

It's a relief and a gut-punch, both at the same time. Chuck breathes out hard, feels the relief wash over him so strongly his legs almost buckle again. He did it, he's Mike's, Director Chilton is going to keep him, he's _safe._ "Thank you," Chuck says, hoarse and small, and this time when he sways on his feet, he sways into Mike's space, pressing up against him. Dares to kiss Director Chilton's neck, rest an arm around him as lightly as he can. "Thank you, thank you, thank you—"

Mike makes a brief, breathy noise when Chuck mouths at the corner of his jaw—catches his breath when Chuck nips hopefully at the shell of his ear, trying to distract him, hoping beyond hope he'll—

"Wait," says Director Chilton, like it's an effort, and takes Chuck's wrists again, stepping back, deliberately disengaging from him. "No—wait, I— You— We can't, uh. Yet. Geez, dude." He takes a bracing breath, shakes his head. "So—I'm gonna look out for you, okay, but you gotta help me out."

"Yeah," says Chuck breathlessly. "Yeah, whatever you want, sir— Mike."

Director Chilton winces a little, but doesn't call him out on the slip. "—And for me to help you, we gotta go see Ms. Kane," he finishes. He touches Chuck's hair again, gingerly—hesitates, then drops a hand to Chuck's jaw and traces the line of it with a knuckle, slow and careful. "Trust me, okay?"

Chuck doesn't, can't. But he nods anyway, smiles weakly, lets himself be pulled. He can already imagine Ms. Kane's dark eyes, like her dad's; can almost hear her sneering _why didn't you say something? Fight back? What did you ever do to help yourself?_ And Chuck doesn't have an answer.

Nobody's asking if Chuck wants to do this, though—it's not like he has a choice. And there's nothing else he can say to Director Chilton to get him to listen; Chuck's seen him in the videos, _Kane Co will protect you_ and _Security serves its people._ He seems to genuinely believe it, and he's not going to be interested in listening if Chuck tries to tell him otherwise. Chuck's just gotta suck it up, keep his head down, and handle it.

Even knowing that, Chuck kind of panics when Director Chilton pulls him into the hallway and heads directly for the door to the CEO's office. It's _stupid,_ pointless and dumb, but he can't hold in the thin, high noise that comes out of him, animal fear locking down higher thought for a second. He locks up, plants his feet and braces himself against Director Chilton's hold. Mike's a strong guy, but Chuck is big and he can be surprisingly hard to drag when he makes up his mind he isn't going to go somewhere; Director Chilton jerks to a halt, startled.

"Chuck?"

"She'll," Chuck blurts out, "—She's not gonna—" he pauses, struggling to think of something, anything, manages, "—you punched Director Grear, I mean—"

"Yeah?" says Director Chilton, frowning. "Are you worried about him, dude? I told you, he's not gonna bother you again."

"No, I, but, if Ms. Kane finds out..."

Mike's brow furrows, and then realization flashes across his face. "Aw, geez, dude," he says—his thumb rubs back and forth past Chuck's wrist. "Buddy, come on, don't worry about me, I'll be fine. It's gonna be fine, I just need you to talk to her with me. That's all. I'll be there the whole time."

Maybe Chuck should just throw himself out the window. He thinks about it, for a panicky second, and then Raoul and Ben's faces flash in front of his eyes, Liam's desperate pacing, Rich's wide, worried eyes. His guys have his back, his friends are trying to find him a way out, he just has to make it until then. He has to make it.

Chuck takes a breath, then another one, and locks himself down. Stares, focusing minutely, at the place Mike is holding onto his wrist. Counts freckles on his arm. He stops dragging his heels, and lets Mike lead him forward. Keeps his eyes on the ground, the seam of Mike's uniform, anything he can look at or think about apart from whatever awful, painful, humiliating bullshit is about to happen.

Director Chilton pauses briefly at the door, presses a hand to the access pad and then walks forward immediately as the door slides open without so much as a confirmation request. The executive office's lights are dimmed, except for the clean, white light of a minimalist desk lamp and the faint light from the long windows that look out over the city.

The CEO of Kane Co. looks up from a red screen, fiery light thrown up across her face in gaunt shadows, dark eyes gleaming and hair falling across her shoulders in deep red waterfalls. "Director Chilton," she says, and sits up, minimizing her screen. Chuck sees her eyes flick back to him, standing behind Mike's shoulder; he hastily trains his eyes back on the floor, feeling cold sweat prickle between his shoulder blades. Ms. Kane's voice is just as quiet and even when she says "...Who's this?"

"Ma'am," says Director Chilton, and salutes, gives Chuck's wrist a little tug. Chuck doesn't step forward, because he's not crazy. Director Chilton tugs again, and then just steps back, letting Ms. Kane see the full, disheveled, miserable picture. "We need to talk."

Rustling. A shift in the light. Chuck stares at his feet, hardly breathing, and hears the sound of Ms. Kane's steps as she comes closer, close enough he can see the shadow she throws out in front of her.

"What's going on?" she says, and there's a slight, sharp edge to her voice. Chuck feels it, feels it slice down his spine like a knife made of ice. He chokes off a tiny, faint noise, swallows hard and doesn't look up. He can see her pristine white boots, just in his peripheral vision—she's close enough he could reach out and touch her. "What is this?"

"The directors were—" Director Chilton chokes on the words, snarls in the back of his throat. "They've been taking— They've, people from their own departments, they were taking them and making them—do things. Doing things to them."

Chuck swallows again, feels tears burn in his throat and behind his eyes, pressure aching in his skull. This time the faint, miserable whimper makes it out of him, barely audible but still _too_ audible in the silent office. Director Chilton's hand squeezes his wrist. Ms. Kane hasn't said a word.

"Julie," says Director Chilton, lower and softer and somehow worse. "They had him come to the party, they were all over him." He doesn't seem to notice the way Chuck flinches at that, the way humiliation and shame unfurl in his chest and cut into the insides of his ribs. "Like, they were— They were _touching_ him, ma'am."

"Who?" Ms. Kane's voice is still quiet and flat, but the words snap out like a whip-crack. "Who was?"

"The whole Board!" Director Chilton's grip on Chuck's wrist is tight enough it hurts, tight like his hand was on Chuck's shoulder at the party. Chuck can feel the bruises setting in. He doesn't wince, doesn't open his mouth. Locked down, bearing whatever happens, tolerating whatever they say about him. He'll survive, he'll get out of here, his guys will find him a transfer...downstairs. And yeah, Chuck will probably get knifed the first five minutes he spends in Motorcity, but anything is better than here. "They took video, _blackmail_ video, he's...not the first."

"Is this true?" says Ms. Kane. Director Chilton must give her a look, because she adds, "—I'm not asking him for details, Mike, but this is...a big deal. I need to hear it from him."

Chuck is so tense he barely hears her. The tears he managed to fight down are starting to push at the back of his throat again and the thought of crying in front of Ms. Kane is horrifying enough to send hot and cold waves of panic rushing across his skin. He's focusing so hard on keeping himself under control, he doesn't realize she's coming closer until a small, cool hand touches his elbow.

"What's his name?" says Ms. Kane, very quiet.

"Chuck," says Director Chilton.

"Chuck," repeats Ms. Kane, louder, and pats his elbow. "Is all of this true?"

It never occurred to Chuck that Ms. Kane would ever care what his name was, let alone that she would say it to him, in person, with her hand on his elbow. He opens his mouth, manages a croaky little noise and is horrified to feel his lower lip tremble and his chin crumple. Ms. Kane has her hand on one of his arms, and Director Chilton is holding onto the other one, and Chuck just bites his cheek hard enough he tastes blood and stares at Ms. Kane's boots, wide-eyed.

"Chuck, hey," says Mike, and the hand on Chuck's wrist loosens, slides up to his shoulder, then to his back, rubbing in circles, and it feels just enough like comfort. Chuck jerks his free hand up and rubs roughly at his face, drags it through his hair, takes another shuddery breath. Mike's hand is warm and big and solid on his back. "Hey, no, oh man, uh..."

"It's a lot to take in," says Ms. Kane, and if Chuck didn't know better it would sound like she was sympathetic, that she was talking about him instead of her. Red light blooms for a second—a tower control screen. "Send me a Bad Day Special," Ms. Kane says, and closes the window. "Come sit down— Mike, you cleaned up downstairs?"

"We've got a lot of hiring to do," says Director Chilton, with a kind of grim satisfaction.

Chuck barely hears them, and certainly doesn't comprehend what he hears. He just lets himself be led, keeps his hand over his mouth, chewing on his tongue as he's pulled over to the chair in front of Ms. Kane's desk. Director Chilton's hand is still on Chuck's back, and he knows, he knows, he _knows_ it's just...proprietary, keeping a hold on him, but it feels so warm and comforting anyway. It's making this worse, trying to make him feel like he's safe, like he can let his guard down. He's not that stupid, he won't be, he _can't_.

There's a faint thrum from nearby as a transport pod hovers up, and Ms. Kane shifts, taking her hand away from Chuck's arm; a faint rustle, and then all of a sudden, a heavy blanket drops into Chuck's lap. It feels thick and heavy and _warm_ , like somebody just picked it up from the dryer. Chuck blinks down at it, almost startled out of his misery for a second, and then looks up and sees Ms. Kane still digging in the transport pod. She pulls out a battered-looking container of some kind—dark green and matte metal, it doesn't look like Deluxe materal at all—and a huge mug and then pats the side of the cube and sends it humming away.

"Here," says Director Chilton, and takes the blanket, unfolds it and drapes it over Chuck's shoulders with clumsy care. It's so warm, and it feels so incredibly good. Chuck barely realized he was cold and shaking until the heat suddenly soaked into him. He takes a gasping breath, then another one, bewildered; when he looks up again, Ms. Kane is pouring something brown and liquid out of the container. It looks like coffee, but the smell that wafts up from it is absolutely phenomenal, sweeter than anything Chuck's ever smelled.

"Try this," says Ms. Kane, and hands him the steaming mug. Chuck takes it numbly and watches as she pulls her desk chair around and settles down in it in front of him, on the wrong side of the desk. "...It's from a friend in the undercity. We're not officially importing yet, but..." she shrugs, makes a little _go ahead_ kind of gesture. "Careful, it's hot."

Chuck stares from it to her, dumbfounded.  It--the drink definitely doesn't  _look_ like a Deluxe drink, and neither does the container it came in, but the concept that he's sitting in Ms. Kane's office, in  _Kane Co tower,_ and the CEO is offering him a drink of something from  _Motorcity_ \--  God, it's official, this is the world's strangest, cruelest dream.  Chuck's finally lost his mind. 

He takes a cautious sip and lets out a sharp, bright little noise and takes another, much bigger gulp. It burns on the way down, but it's so incredibly good he can't bring himself to care. The heat seems to burn outward from his stomach, warming him up from the inside, and Mike's hand is still on his back, and Ms. Kane is watching him with her brows quirked in concern under her pristine bangs, and Chuck is getting more certain by the second that none of this can possibly be real.  Fuck, but he doesn't want to wake up.

"I," he says croakily, and swallows, licks his lips. Looks from Ms. Kane to Director Chilton and back again. "I don't. Um. Thank you?" No, he can't sound uncertain. "Thank you very much."

"You're welcome," says Ms. Kane. She leans forward a little. "...I need you to answer my question. I need to hear it from you, just a yes or a no, so I can...move forward. Is what he said true?"

Chuck takes a deep breath, losing her dark, intense eyes, looking at her knees instead. Steels himself, and then nods minutely.

Ms. Kane sighs out long and slow and sits back again. For a while, she's just silent, staring somewhere past Chuck, apparently lost in thought. Then she blinks, shakes her head and looks back at him.

"Thank you," she says.

Chuck opens his mouth to say _yes, ma'am_ , and then chokes on the words, gaping. Ms. Kane looks back at him evenly. Her hands are clenched on her knees into sharp, small fists, knuckles white. But the only thing he can see in the way she looks at him is something awfully, terribly close to sympathy.

"S..sorry?" says Chuck. "Ma'am?"

"Thank you," repeats Ms. Kane. "For bringing this to my attention. This—what they've been doing— It's completely unacceptable." She looks Chuck up and down, then looks up at Director Chilton. "Could you escort him somewhere private, please? We have a lot to talk about, and I don't think he needs the extra stress tonight."

Mike snaps off a salute and reaches down to take Chuck's elbow, helping him up onto his feet, making sure the blanket is securely wrapped around his shoulders. Whatever they used to make it warm, it doesn't seem to be fading; the warmth is soaking into Chuck's bones, and Ms. Kane isn't wrong, he's...tired. He's really, really tired. Tired enough even the adrenaline and fear can't keep him from swaying on his feet.

"I'll be back, ma'am," says Mike, and Ms. Kane nods, already going back around her desk, pulling up screens as she goes. She doesn't look concerned or sympathetic, now. The light from her screens glitters on her dark eyes, her dark lipstick turns her mouth into a stern, tight line. "Come on, buddy, let's get you lying down. Do you want the rest of this?" And Chuck does, he wants more of whatever he was drinking, but he shakes his head anyway, lets it be taken from his hands and lets himself be led away.

He doesn't really register why he's being led to the massive office windows until he sees another pod come gliding down and dock, and the window panel openly seamlessly for them. Mike helps him into the new pod, and the door closes behind them; Chuck is helped down onto a bed and something in the battered remains of his brain kicks at him weakly. He reaches out for Mike with some faint, dizzy intention of doing something to thank him, to show him Chuck intends to be good, that he'll make it worth Mike's while. But Mike is already pulling back, giving Chuck's upper arms a last, lingering squeeze before stepping away entirely.

"Get some rest," he says, and gestures around to a pod that looks way, _way_ better furnished than the one that took Chuck away from the party. Furnishings Chuck has only ever seen in exclusive management catalogs are faintly visible in the dim, ambient white light filtering through the windows. Some part of him, under the exhaustion, is vaguely aware that this has to be Director Chilton's private pod suite. That's—good, that's great. Chuck doesn't know how long he's going to have here, but being left to wait on Director Chilton's bed while he goes to handle things, that seems like a good sign.

"There's food in the fridge," Director Chilton is saying. "You can order things under my account, if you want, that's fine. Uh...but you should probably just sleep. You look really rough, dude."

He can't look "rough" if he's going to keep Mike's interest, his protection. Chuck nods blearily, and fights the urge to yawn or possibly sob. He needs sleep. A couple of hours, he'll feel better after that, and he can get himself cleaned up. He has to figure out how he can possibly convince Mike that he's enough of an investment to warrant Mike putting himself on the entire board's bad side, and he'll...he'll do that, after he sleeps. He just needs to sleep for a while, first.

"Goodnight, Chuckles," says Director Chilton quietly, and steps away. Hesitates in the door, half-turning back like he's about to say something—then shakes his head and steps through into Ms. Kane's office again. The door closes seamlessly behind him; the landscape shifts and changes as his pod drifts back up into its programmed holding pattern, far above the distant city.

Chuck feels like he can't possibly fall asleep, like he'll lie awake for hours on the jittery energy of everything that just happened—but at some point he must pass out, because he wakes up shaking from whatever he was dreaming about, curled into a ball and gasping. He's crying before he really understands why, or where he is, what's going on; when he does remember, it just makes it worse. Everything is so _much,_ he doesn't even know how he feels or why. The only response his body can find is to shake and wheeze and sob so hard his head spins.

It happens over and over again, throughout the night. He sleeps, wakes, cries, punches Director Chilton's pillow, sleeps, cries some more. Tries to get up and shower, clean himself up, and barely makes it upright before he sits back down and just pulls the warm blanket over him again, huddling back into a ball. The thought of taking off his clothes to shower makes his skin crawl.

Eventually, _finally_ , it's too much. Finally, he sleeps and he doesn't wake up again.

—

The Board is a mess. Mike interviews them all throughout the course of the night; he's threatened, bribed, blustered at, sold out to. Jones, the one Chuck said didn't have any interest, has apparently decided his best strategy is to lean on that. Larsson is apoplectic and refuses to answer any of Mike's questions. Grear, whose lip is swelling magnificently where Mike hit him, is equally uncooperative, but a lot creepier about it, making biting little comments and insinuations that make Mike itch to punch him again. Archer responds, but coldly and briefly, with unhelpful little non-answers; Webb does pretty much the same thing, but with more icy dignity, like being questioned by Mike is beneath him somehow. Carraway takes the whole thing with a smiling, mild-mannered twinkle in his eye, like he and Mike have some secret understanding, downplaying the entire awful situation while simultaneously giving Mike anything he asks for on any of the other directors. _We were a little rough with the boy, but I promise you he enjoyed more than he lets on. It's an indulgence, but the people we play with go far. Plenty of young men who would_ love _to sit in on a board meeting. We're all men here, Mike._

Mike spends the longest on that interrogation, because Carraway's the one who gives the most information, and by the time he's done he's about ready to breathe fire. Carraway doesn't seem concerned with the ramifications of what he's been caught doing; he seems faintly amused when Mike mentions sentences or jail time, and way more interested in how upset Mike is by the whole thing, like Mike's some kind of fascinating anomaly. He gives Mike details Chuck didn't even mention, abuses of power and personnel, not seeming to care that he's implicating himself as well. A dark, smiling hint here, a video clip there. A picture of the Board, frozen in mid-conversation on their way out of a meeting. Chuck standing in the middle of them, looking flushed and miserable, with Carraway's hand on his shoulder.

"I know you understand the impulse," Carraway says, as Mike stands up and finally closes his recording screen for the night, sick to his stomach and exhausted, jaw aching from his grinding teeth. "The urge to take a little advantage when a pretty little thing drops directly into your lap."

Mike goes very still for a second, fighting himself. "Don't," he manages finally, soft and harsh. " _Don't_ compare me to you."

"It's not as though you haven't made the most of your opportunities," Carraway says, like he didn't hear. His eyes are fixed on Mike's face, like he's drinking in every twitch and shift of his expression. "We all noticed how often you get called up to the top floor."

Mike's lungs crumple like they're being squeezed. "That's not—" he starts, incensed, but Carraway gives him that blank, warm smile, just a little pitying.

"...He knows how it works, too," he says, and props his chin up on one hand. "How fast he turned around and got himself cozied up under your arm instead, when he realized you'd gotten him in trouble with us—our boy always did have a brain, behind that pretty face."

Mike slams the door behind him.

—

Ms. Kane is still awake, when Mike goes to see her. She looks about as terrible as he feels, eyes blazing, lips pressed into a tight line.

"I requisitioned Webb's meeting minutes," she says, before Mike even has a chance to speak. "It's bad. It's as bad as I..." she trails off, shakes her head. "They _recorded_ it. Like they were _proud._ "

"Blackmail," Mike growls, and drops down into the chair still pulled up in front of her desk. "They had a list, if he rocked the boat they'd pick any part they could twist around and send those out to you and his supervisors, his whole department."

Ms. Kane stands up slowly, comes around the desk and puts a hand on Mike's shoulder. He keeps his eyes forward, breathing too hard, feeling the guilt and the anger pound in his chest.

“...I should have known,” he says finally, almost steady. "I should have known something was wrong."

"They had a system," Ms. Kane says quietly. "They knew what they were doing, it's not your—"

"I should have asked, though!" Mike says, too loud, agonized. "I should have pushed!"

"He would have shut you out if you did!" She squeezes his arm even harder, until it aches, focusing him. Drawing him back. "They convinced him he _let_ them do all that stuff, and anybody who found out would blame him for it, not them. He would never have told you."

Mike holds her eyes for a second, then finally breathes out, looking away, forcing himself to let go of some of the tension in his shoulders.

"I know," he says, and scrubs both hands over his face. "I know. It's just...a lot."

Julie nods, and her hand on his shoulder slides up and squeezes the back of his neck once, warm and tight. Mike twitches, startled—Ms. Kane jumps too, and pulls her hand away.

"...Sorry," she says, and walks briskly back around her desk, drops into her chair and leans onto it, eyes fixed on the desktop.

"Sorry?" Mike repeats. "What for? Uh, ma'am."

Ms. Kane is silent for a long second, just staring at the blank white desktop. "...People we play with go far," she says finally, quietly. Her thin, pale fingers knot together on the desk in front of her. Loosen. Knot up again. She has shadows under her eyes, Mike notices suddenly. Deep, dark shadows, like her father used to have. She goes silent for a second, hands folded tight and strict on the table in front of her, lips pressed tight, then bursts out, “—That’s...what they said, the first time he tried to tell them 'no'. And that's me, isn’t it? That’s—what I did, that’s what I’m doing.”

Mike’s stomach bottoms out. “I,” he says, awful and hurt. “What?”

“Abusing my power!” Julie— _Ms. Kane_ says, and pushes herself up again, takes a few jerky, pacing steps and then doubles back. The tension is taking over her whole small, wiry frame, she's humming with it. "I did the same thing to you—"

"No," says Mike—and then again, stronger, "No, ma'am, Julie. _Julie,_ you're nothing like them, okay? I wouldn't do the stuff I do with you if you were."

"You don't exactly have a _choice,_ " Julie says roughly. "I'm your boss."

"If you were like them," Mike says, with absolute, dead certainty, "...I would take you down."

Julie blinks, startled out of whatever dark place her mind had gone to. Stares at him like she's never seen him before.

"I wouldn't let you do something like that to me," Mike says firmly. "I wouldn't let you do something like that to anybody."

Julie meets his eyes, and Mike steps forward before he can think about it, comes around the desk and grabs one small, cold hand. Julie's not shaking, but she's tense and fragile in his hands, wrist so thin it feels like he could snap it in half by squeezing too hard.

"I do this because I want to," he says, and means every word.

Ms. Kane opens her mouth—stops, bites her lip. Sniffs, and then reaches up with her free hand and dabs at her eyes. Mike falters, mortified, and then grunts as Julie's arms wrap around his chest and squeeze hard, holding on with desperate ferocity. Her head only comes up to his chin.

Mike puts an arm around her—then the other, then hugs her back, dares to cup a hand against the back of her head and run a hand over her hair. A familiar fierce, protective hurt is rising in his chest, choking off his voice, and all he can do is hold on.

"... _What if I turn out like that?_ " Ms. Kane mumbles into his chest, and her hands make fists in the back of his uniform. "What if I turn out like them?"

"You're not going to," says Mike, and swallows the strangling knot in his throat. "We're not going to be like them, okay? We won't let that happen."

Julie makes a tiny, sighing sound when Mike kisses her forehead. Mike shivers at the noise, kisses her temple, backs up until he can fall haphazardly into the CEO's chair. Lifts—his boss, his— _Julie_ , into his lap, and brushes her hair back reverently to kiss the pale stretch of her neck. Julie's hands find the collar of his uniform, one of his sleeves, and cling there like she can't let go. Like she's _scared_.

"You're good," Mike says, soft like he'll scare her away if he talks too loud, and kisses her again, her jaw, under her ear. "You're a good CEO, you're a good boss, you're—good. You're doing good."

"Doesn't feel like it," Julie mumbles, and turns her head a little, pressing her face into his cheek. She's the same as she's ever been, but somehow she feels so incredibly frail now. Mike rubs her back, her arms. "This was happening right under my nose, Mike, and—I had a bad feeling, about them, and I never looked into it, and—and I should have, I let your friend get hurt..."

Mike winces a little—but he's not here for Chuck, as much as he wants to help him too. He's here for Julie, the way she's been here for him before. "You didn't _let_ them do that," he says, even though he's been feeling the same way, thinking the same things. "They were supposed to be helping you carry the city and they let you down, that's not on you."

Julie doesn't answer, just shudders. Mike wraps an arm around her, holds her gentle but close, feels her sob and catch a hitching moan in her throat as he pulls her tight against him, trying to anchor her. "We'll be okay," he says, and kisses her neck, her forehead again, holding on tight. "We're gonna be okay."

—

Chuck wakes up feeling washed out and weak. He's cold, too, although he's pretty much always cold these days; he seems to have kicked the blankets off while he was asleep, and his fingers and toes are practically numb. There's silvery nighttime light spilling in through the windows, illuminating Director Chilton's stupidly nice, obsessively neat pod; he must have only slept for a few hours, and it's still before dawn. There's no alarm, so he's not really sure what woke him up, since—

"You don't really want me, do you?"

Chuck yelps and jumps, hauling the blankets up in front of him like they're a shield. Mike is standing in the door of the pod, watching him, leaning on the frame. His uniform is unbuttoned, and there are tired shadows under his eyes; it looks like he hasn't slept at all since the last time Chuck saw him.

"I," says Chuck, "I, what?"

"When you kissed me," says Mike quietly. "You're hoping I'll keep you safe if you're...mine. Instead of theirs."

Chuck stares at him, stomach curdled into a tiny, cold knot. Opens his mouth, and can't find words. Mike is watching his face, and when Chuck can't find an answer he nods slowly, breathes out.

"Okay," he says, and drags his fingers through his hair, lips pressed tight together, a muscle working in his jaw. He still doesn't look angry, but Chuck can't read his face and the fear is tightening around his throat like a noose. "...Right. Okay."

There's no point lying. "I'm sorry," Chuck gets out, strangled. "I was, I just thought— I'm sorry—"

"No," says Director Chilton. "Dude, no, it's...fine."

It's not fine, It's obviously, blatantly not fine. Chuck knots his hands up on his thighs, licks his dry lips, tries to think of a way to make up for this, to fix it.

"I do, uh..." It wasn't a _lie,_ not completely. Mike's handsome and easy-going—and powerful, now, second in command of the whole city. He's plenty attractive. But there's no way of saying that without sounding lukewarm and pathetic and fake. Chuck fidgets, unhappy. "It wasn't a lie. All of it. I would...I do. You're really, uh..."

"You don't have to do that," says Mike. His voice sounds just a little bit rough. "Did you seriously think I wouldn't— Do you seriously think I won't keep you safe unless you...do that for me?"

"I dunno," says Chuck, instead of _yes obviously yes why else would you piss off the whole Board of Directors_ . "I'm not lying. I wasn't. I wouldn't, wouldn't lie to you. Sir."

Director Chilton huffs out a breath at that like the word is a punch in the gut, and Chuck realizes his mistake too late. "I mean Mike!" he says, too late and too loud. "Sorry!"

"You don't have to be sorry, either," says Mike, and crosses the room slowly, settles down on the other end of the bed. When Chuck dares to glance over in his direction, Mike has a hand over his mouth, eyes distant and tight with unhappiness. It takes him a long, long second to keep talking, and when he does his voice is low and halting, one word at a time. "None of this— _none_ of this is your fault. Nobody thinks it was your fault."

"It was, though," Chuck blurts out, sudden and loud. Mike jumps, staring at him, like he doesn't know. Like the other directors didn't make sure he knew. Chuck should shut his stupid mouth, he's making it worse, but it's been so long and he hasn't talked to anybody about it and the words come tumbling out in a painful rush. "I didn't do anything, I should have done _something_ , but I just let them..." his stomach churns, the words catch in his throat. _You look so good, you sound so nice, it's like you're_ tryin' _to catch my eye, sweetheart._ He would've sworn he cried himself out last night, but his chest is aching again. "They only kept me because I was... _entertainment,_ if I hadn't let them get to me, if I'd been less..." His voice breaks stupidly on the words, and he stops, covers his face with his hands and scrubs at it hard. "Shit. I mean— Sorry. I'm sorry, I'm really—"

"You don't have to be!" Mike says, and Chuck jumps, startled out of his pit of self-loathing. Mike—Director Chilton is watching him, eyes dark and hard like they were when he punched Grear, pulled Chuck out of the directors' hands and yelled them down. "You don't have to be sorry," he says again. "That's _stupid,_ that's not—" He shoots up to his feet like he can't bear to sit still any longer, pacing restlessly. Chuck flinches at the sudden movement, and then relaxes a little, watching in bafflement as Mike walks a tight, small circle, hands gesturing sharply as he talks. "Nothing you do is _asking_ for some gross old guy to touch you when you don't want him to! Okay? 'Cause—you didn't, and I know you didn't! And if you did, it's because he messed with you until you _needed_ it, and that's not your fault either! This whole mess is gross and messed up, dude, but _you're_ not. And none of it's your fault, so—so don't even say that!"

"But I asked—"

"They told you to!"

"I let them—"

"They _hurt you_ if you didn't!" Mike wheels around to the bed and grabs both of his upper arms, shaking them sharply. His grip aches, and Chuck was always skinny before but now he can feel Mike's hands wrap almost around his entire bicep. "Chuckles, _listen_. I've never had somebody...do that stuff, the kind of stuff they did. But I bet I'd be a mess, dude, it'd mess me up so bad. You did a really good job holding out, but they weren't gonna let up until you gave them what they wanted. That's not your fault. There's no way that's your fault."

Chuck stares at him for a long second, blank, trying to fit the words into his head. Then, slowly, something huge and twisted and awful rises up in his throat. He tries to take a breath—it cracks into a wobbly kind of gasp.

"I," he starts, an aborted half-sob, "—I, but, I was—"

"You did good," Mike tells him, and Chuck lets out a soft, awful whimper because he didn't, he couldn't, he can't take this. Mike doesn't know, he can't possibly get what that means, but it still feels so, so good to hear. For the first time, it seems like something that was between them has dropped away, and he's just—he's Mike, again. He's a little older-looking, wearing the wrong clothes, but he's _Mike._ "I would've gone nuts tryin' to deal with that by myself, Chuck, you did really, _really_ good. Holy crap, bro, c'mere. Hey, you're good now, I gotcha..."

It's been a long time since Chuck could cling to Mike when he felt bad, but crumbling forward into his arms still feels as natural as breathing. Chuck holds on so tight his hands ache, presses himself into Mike's chest and buries his face in one shoulder, making an awful, pathetic amount of noise—helpless, exhausted sobs, tearing painfully out of his aching chest. Mike makes awkward, soothing sounds and pats his head, and the feeling of his palm smoothing over the short, ragged fuzz of Chuck's hair sparks another memory, Larsson's eyes on his face, the smothering humiliation and frustration and _hurt_ —

"They cut my _hair,_ " Chuck chokes out, and that sets him off on a fresh wave of sobbing. That stupid tiny thing, that— _hurts,_ so much. Mike goes _"I know, buddy, I know, that sucks, I'm sorry,"_ and he doesn't know, but it helps. "I, I was—it's so—stupid _,_ I didn't _do_ anything, I didn't do anything wrong, I didn't—"

"I know, dude, shh..."

"Just grabbed me one day after, _hhh_ after inspection, I didn't do anything wrong _,_ they just said— _fuck_ —said I was, they said they needed a server, and—I didn't know until they started—"

"Oh man, buddy." Mike's hand presses on the back of his head, wraps him up. Warm and tight and gentle. "Aw geez. That's messed up, dude."

"I didn't want, I didn't want them to—"

"I know. Of course you didn't, dude." Mike rubs roughly between his shoulder blades, and for just a second his voice is hard and sharp. "I saw your face when they were messin' with you." Then he's softening again, rocking them both back and forth a little bit. "...Even if you—even if they made you ask, that doesn't mean— I know, bro. You don't have to convince me, I believe you. I don't think anybody who watched that could've believed you wanted it."

"Carraway did," Chuck mumbles.

Mike makes a noise like a snarl, tight in his chest. "The hell he did," he growls, and his hands tighten on Chuck, holding him protectively close. "He knew what he was doing. You could see it in his face, he freaking _knew_ you were—scared, and, and he knew you didn't want him to touch you like that, he just didn't _care_. He was screwing with you on purpose and he's gonna pay for it. Okay?"

It's a weird feeling to be simultaneously amazed and terrified by his own best friend. Chuck holds on, presses his face into Mike's neck and breathes him in, trying to slow his heart down.

"...I missed you," he says, not meaning to, tiny and shaky into Mike's shoulder. Bumps his temple against Mike's jaw, leaning into the solid arm around his shoulder. "...'M sorry. Sorry. Stupid. I'm just being—"

"Nah," Mike murmurs, and squeezes him harder for a second, hard enough it almost aches. "You're not stupid. Smartest guy I know."

Chuck laughs wetly, startled, and Mike laughs too, quieter. It's been a long time since somebody cared if Chuck was smart or not—in R&D he's surrounded by the other smartest guys in the city, and outside R&D all he's been good for is entertainment, for the faces and the noises he makes, how red he goes when he's embarrassed. He forgot how nice it felt, when Mike just came out with something like that out of nowhere.

"I missed you too," Mike mumbles into his hair, and runs a hand over his back, slides it up to give his shoulder a squeeze—

Chuck twitches, startled by a sharp, achy throb of pain down his arm. Mike must feel him move, or hear the faint hitch of his breath, because he pulls back.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," says Chuck, and flexes his arm a little, trying to be inconspicuous, working the elbow and wrist until the ache starts to fade. "I'm good."

"What..." Mike reaches out and grabs his arm, tugs on it, turns it over between them. Chuck hasn't looked at the place Mike had a hold of his wrist in Ms. Kane's office, but he felt the ache, and he's always bruised easily. He's not surprised to see the imprint of Mike's hand, darkening to a livid reddish purple against his pale skin.

"Oh my god," says Mike, and turns Chuck's hand over in his own very, very gently, like he thinks Chuck is made of glass. Runs his fingertips over the bruises. "I— Did I do this? Dude, Chuck, I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," says Chuck, and is surprised to realize that he actually kind of means it. Mike didn't mean to hurt him, he's sorry about it, and it's...pretty okay, compared to most of the times somebody has hurt him.

"It's not okay," says Mike. He looks pretty distraught, actually. "I hurt your shoulder, too, didn't I? That's why you jumped."

"Just bruises," Chuck says, and knows that's the wrong thing to say when he sees Mike's face go tight and anguished. "Mike, it's seriously not a big deal, I'll heal."

"You shouldn't have to," Mike says, and rakes his hand through his hair, rumpling up his bangs. "I didn't mean to hurt you, bro, I was just—" he cuts himself off, shaking his head. "I'm sorry."

Okay, so, telling him it's not a big deal is obviously not going over well, and saying all that stuff out loud about how it's way better to be hurt on accident than on purpose is just going to make Mike feel worse. It makes Chuck feel worse just thinking it. Chuck opens his mouth, thinks carefully, and then says "...I forgive you, dude."

That seems to be the magic phrase. Mike slumps, relieved, nodding. "Okay," he says. "Cool. Yeah. Okay."

He shivers all over when Chuck leans over and brushes a hopeful, apologetic kiss past the corner of his jaw. For a second they're both still, neither of them breathing, but...he did it, and the world didn't end. Chuck presses a little closer, cranes around to kiss Mike properly, hopeful.

For a second Mike leans into it, making a quiet noise almost like a moan. Then, abruptly, he stiffens. Chuck goes still, and Mike takes a sharp, cut-off breath against his lips and jerks away, staring, breathing hard.

"Sorry," says Chuck, more because it seems like the thing to say than because he knows what he did wrong.

"I'm not like them," Mike says, fast and rough, and scrubs at his mouth. "I'm not like that, okay, if that's still why you're—"

Fuck, he really messed this up. Chuck pushes himself back, putting distance between them, trying to ignore the instinct telling him Mike's about to lash out, backhand him or grab for the front of his shirt "I know," he says, hopelessly. "No I _do,_ I do know. That's not why, Mike, seriously."

"Yeah but..." Mike pauses for a second, holding whatever he's about to say, fighting with himself, and then bursts out, "—but how am I supposed to know if you're telling me the truth, dude? How am I supposed to believe you, you'd say anything to keep them from hurting you, and you think I'm like them, I _know_ you do!"

"Don't—" Chuck gets out, choking on the word, but Mike is still talking, not listening.

"—You think I don't notice when you forget to call me 'Mike'? You think I don't know the only reason you call me that is because I told you to?! I don't _want_ this if you're just trying to keep me from hurting you, I'm not—"

"Don't!" Chuck says, louder. "—Don't...yell at me! Stop!"

Mike falters, startled. Chuck holds still, breathing hard. His whole body is aching with tension, but Mike wants to act like his friend, and Chuck's going to treat him that way. Including snapping back, including _arguing_ if he has to.

"I wanted you, before any of this," Chuck says, and sees Mike's eyes widen, the hope and mistrust and hurt spelled out on his face all-too-clearly. "Before you got promoted. Before the meetings. After they started dragging me up there, I used to imagine you—running in, fixing everything. And you did."

"Took me long enough," Mike says, and crosses his arms, folds in on himself, as small and miserable as Chuck has ever seen him.

Chuck watches him for a second, hands tight on his knees, thinking. Then he sighs and scoots a little closer, presses up against Mike's side.

"...I would've had to go to another dinner tonight," he says eventually, quietly. Mike glances up at him, mouth set in a thin, crooked line, eyes tight with pain. "Some gross old man would have his hands all over me right now. So...whenever you got there, dude, I'm just glad you did. Okay?"

Mike faces forward again and swallows, throat working. Then, slowly, he leans over sideways and bonks his temple against Chuck's shoulder. Chuck feels something startled and warm blossom in his chest, in his throat, behind his eyes; he reaches out very carefully and puts an arm around Mike's shoulders.

"Can I...?" he mumbles, and turns his head a little, presses his face into Mike's hair. It smells like home, and warmth, and safety, and for the first time in a long time Chuck wants— He just _wants,_ he wants things. And he doesn't know if he'll be okay with actually doing them, but he wants to find out.

"Only if you want to," says Mike, catching on the words, and then makes a soft, devastated sort of noise as Chuck nudges his chin up and kisses him again, careful and exploratory, not pushing this time. Testing, making sure both of them are okay. Mike shivers, but he doesn't seem upset—just unsure, cautious.

"I want to," says Chuck, as plain and certain as he can, and this time, for the first time, Mike leans up and kisses him back.

"I won't let them touch you again," Mike says as soon as they break apart again, like he's desperate to make Chuck understand that. "Even if you don't do this. You know that, right? You don't have to— _pay_ for that."

He already said as much, but hearing it again still takes a weight off of Chuck's mind, calms down the panicky hammering of his heart. "I know," he says. "I know you're not like that. I seriously—I just _want_ to."

"Okay." Mike wets his lips, eyes still fixed on Chuck's mouth. "But—okay. But if I do something you don't like, you gotta tell me."

"What if..." Chuck swallows hard, jerks a shoulder up in a shrug that he knows doesn't look anything like casual. "What if I just...tell you what I _do_ like. And you do that?"

Mike glances up at him, blinking—nods, slowly, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders.

"I can do that," he says, and sits back, spine going very straight, head held high like he's at attention. "I'm good at following orders, ha." He wets his lips again, grins, and if Chuck didn't know better he'd say Mike almost looks nervous. "So, uh...what do you want me to do? Can I...?" he half-raises a hand toward Chuck's arm, glances up for permission.

"You can touch me," says Chuck, dry-mouthed. Mike nods, eyes dark and intent on his face, and reaches out to trace a hand very carefully along Chuck's cheekbone, then down his jaw. He's watching his hand with the intensity of somebody walking into a minefield, and it would be a little bit funny except Chuck is watching him the same way, breathlessly tense, waiting for it to feel bad.

It doesn't, though, even though it easily could. Gentleness isn't mutually exclusive with cruelty. But there's no cruelty in the way Mike's touching him; like he's amazed that he has the chance, like it's a privilege.

"You can kiss me," Chuck says, dry-mouthed, and Mike makes a subvocal little sound and leans forward. Chuck leans in too, but Mike doesn't kiss his lips; he ducks down to press his lips to Chuck's shoulder, the place his hands left bruises. Kisses Chuck's collarbone, the angle of his throat and his jaw. His hands have found Chuck's knees, holding on, rubbing up and down. They feel warm through the flimsy fabric of Chuck's pants, and warmer when they find the place where his shirt has ridden up, fingers nudging hopefully under the hem— No, no no no, that's enough, too much, that's _too much_ —

"Please," says Chuck, small and weak and wobbly, and Larsson would have snapped at him, Carraway would have pretended to misunderstand so he could keep pushing, but Mike tenses up and pulls away fast, untangles them like Chuck's skin burns him.

"You okay?" he says, and Chuck just stares at him, breathing hard, amazed. "Chuckles, you good?"

The useless panic is still bouncing pointlessly across his nerve endings at a billion miles an hour, it feels like his heart is about to pound out of his chest, but—it stopped, it's over. He's not getting punished for saying no, and Mike stopped, he didn't ignore it and keep going. He stopped, it's fine. It's fine.

"I'm...good," Chuck says, and shakes his head, makes himself breathe slowly through his nose for a second until the trembling edge leaves his voice. "No, I'm good. I'm. In control."

"Yeah you are," says Mike, and knots his hands on his knees. He's leaning in like he doesn't even know he's doing it, like he's desperate to reach out but he's forcing himself not to. "Sorry."

"You can take your shirt off," Chuck tries, daring, and instead of looking affronted by his audacity, Mike licks his lips and grins.

"Yeah," he says, hoarse and soft. "Okay."

Mike's stupidly fit, it turns out, grown into the too-long, gangly limbs Chuck remembers; he's still not a bruiser, but there's an obscene amount of smooth, brown skin and lithe muscle on display. Chuck stares, poleaxed, as Mike works his jacket off and his shirt over his head and folds both neatly, setting them carefully on his bedside table. There's no reason for him to do that—he's a director, he could recycle his clothes every two hours and get a whole new uniform and nobody would so much as blink. The fact that he still folds his clothes like he did when he was a Junior Cadet somehow makes Chuck chest ache again.

Mike pats the bundle once, then turns to face forward again and grins at Chuck eagerly, practically vibrating in place. Chuck is suddenly, vividly reminded of one of the tiny, stupid dogs KaneCo sells, waiting for a pat on the head and a treat.

"Wow," he says, and Mike's brilliant smile goes a little self-conscious at the edges, his eyes darken and slide down to the side. It's a startling look, almost shy, and also it's really _stupidly_ hot.

Chuck can't just sit there and look anymore, he has to touch _something_ , but he can't bring himself to touch the vast majority of the skin that's bare in front of him. He reaches out and touches one arm, and Mike immediately holds out the arm in question, offering it hopefully like having any part of him touched is the best possible thing, and— It's just—

Chuck pulls his hand away, feeling something sick and cold twist his stomach into a frozen knot. It takes him a minute, staring at Mike's startled, confused face, to realize the feeling is jealousy.

"...Chuck?" says Mike quietly.

Mike likes this, likes being touched—enjoys it openly and obviously, and Chuck has to swallow hard on the taste of bile and envy in his throat. The resentment he told Mike he wasn't feeling— _wasn't_ feeling, was trying not to feel, doesn't want to feel—stabs at him. Mike was off being touched by somebody else, enjoying it, experimenting with somebody who listened when he said "no" and taught him he had nothing to be afraid of. Mike got to spend the last couple of years working toward everything he ever wanted, while Chuck got dragged down and fucked over for no reason at all, and it's so—

"Maybe we should stop, dude," says Mike, and reaches out like he wants to pat Chuck's shoulder—falters and pulls his hand away, rubbing his fingers together uneasily, hands working. "I don't wanna— Here, I'll get dressed again, okay? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"

"No," says Chuck convulsively. Mike startles at the sound of his voice, and so does Chuck, mouth snapping shut, staring at Mike helplessly. It takes a disproportionate effort to force the words out, to make himself open his mouth; when he does, his voice comes out faltering and ragged. "Don't, I'll...handle it, I'm good, I just. Do you _want_ to stop?"

"...No," says Mike, like he feels guilty to admit it. "But I don't want you to be—"

"I'm not," says Chuck obstinately, and reaches up to pull his hair out of his eyes, then wavers as his hands brush his bare forehead instead. Another soft little pang of hurt shoots through him, but this one is a lot older, and he's got experience breathing through it and letting it happen. He breathes, meets Mike's eyes and glares. "I don't want to stop."

"Are you sure—"

" _Yes._ "

Mike hesitates for another long minute, arms crossed, a muscle working in his jaw. Then, finally, and breathes out and nods.

"Alright," he says—and then, stronger, "—okay. What can I do?"


	4. depression

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chuck takes some advice.

Somebody is pinging Chuck's comm.

He ignores it for a while, snuggles deeper into the soft warmth that's wrapped around him and buries his face in somebody's collarbone—and then realization catches up with him. Bed, a warm body next to his, bare skin against his. Chuck's not wearing a shirt, and neither is—

Mike.

He's still in Mike's bed, in Mike's pod, curled up in Mike's arms. Everything feels warm, even his feet, and his shoulder still hurts but that's nothing. Chuck's still wearing his pants, but they're unzipped and twisted up around him—the blankets are far enough down Mike's body it's pretty clear he's not wearing anything at all. Chuck has a vague memory of Mike's hands carefully working his jeans open, Mike kissing him over and over again and— _promising_ things, promising nobody would ever hurt him again, promising everything would be okay, promising Mike would take care of him, whatever he wanted, anything he needed.

The memory brings something rising up in Chuck's chest; some awful, boiling mixture of love and fear and hurt and hope and strange, terrible revulsion. For a second he lies perfectly still and can't breathe, staring at Mike's still, peaceful face. His hair is falling away from his tired eyes, his lips still look a little flushed where Chuck bit them last night. There's a faint, worried furrow between his brows, even while he's sleeping, and sharp angles to his cheekbones that weren't there when they were kids.

God, he turned out handsome. It would be really cool if Chuck had been able to notice that without all this... _this_ going on.

Chuck's comm is still pinging, soft but insistent. Chuck sighs, untangles himself very carefully from Mike's arms and pulls the blanket back up, shivering a little as the cool air hits his bare skin. Hunts around, finds the stupid tight shirt they had him wear to the dinner and kicks it vengefully into the corner. Mike said he could order things, and right now, somehow, Chuck is inclined to believe him.

He has the clothing unit print him up a sweater two sizes too big for him and pulls it gratefully on, feeling kind of dumb but kind of wonderfully luxurious. The pants are still too tight and ride way lower on his hips than he likes, but it feels vulnerable enough to have been briefly shirtless in Mike's pod, Chuck's definitely not going to take his pants off. The sweater falls to halfway down his thighs anyway, so it's not like it makes a ton of difference.

All of that done, he slides through into the bathroom, perches on the edge of the toilet, and opens the call.

"—Answer anytime tonight," says Ben, and then looks back at his screen and greets Chuck with a look that's somewhere between relief and profound aggravation. "—Where _are_ you?!"

"Dude," says Rich, crowding up behind Ben and filling the screen with pale skin and worried green eyes. "Dude! What the fuck happened? I heard you were—uh. Getting transferred, and then nobody knew where you were, or what happened—"

"You look better," says Liam, cramming himself in against Ben's shoulder and totally ignoring his glare. "I told them you probably found somewhere to get some food and some sleep. Did things...work out? With Chilton?"

"Chilton?" says Rich sharply. "Director Chilton? What about him?"

"He apparently didn't murder you and throw you off the tower," says Raoul, who's barely half a face on the edge of the screen—a slice of brown skin, one worried eye and a few stray curls of dark hair, cut off by one of Ben's broad shoulders. Even barely visible, he looks exhausted; even bigger shadows than usual under his eyes, and a dusting of stubble across his face, like he's been up all night. "So it went about as well as it could. We don't need to talk about that." He tweaks the video screen in his direction, ignoring the commotion as Liam gets halfway into Ben's lap to stay in the call and they have a brief but fierce shoving match about it. "We can transfer you tomorrow night. How soon can you get back down here? We need to get you prepped."

"Uh," says Chuck.

"You'll need basic orientation for your...new department _."_

"Uh..." says Chuck again, and this time Liam notices the look on his face.

" _Uh_ what?" he says sharply. "Is everything okay?"

"I just..." Chuck scrubs his palms on his knees a little—he can't quite bring himself to look any of them in the eyes. "I don't know if I actually...need to leave."

Chuck's never seen Ben look that skeptical before, and that's saying something. "Kid," Ben says, "listen, I don't know what happened with you two, but just because Chilton's nicer to look at—"

"Yeah that's definitely why I want to stay," says Chuck, needled. "Dude, don't pull the ace card on me, just because I'm into sex doesn't mean it's the only reason I do stuff, come on!"

"Probably a bigger reason than you think, though," Ben says, and crosses his arms. "Assholes do stuff like this, feed you a line about how they're better and they'll make sure you're treated right from now on, and then they drag you right back down."

"Yeah, but sometimes it's not just a line!" Chuck glances back at the glass wall, at Mike's silently-sleeping figure on the other side. The walls of the pods are thoroughly sound-proofed, but he lowers his voice anyway. "...Sometimes things are just—better! Sometimes people are just better!"

"He's a _director,_ " says Rich, agonized. "Good people don't make it that far."

"...But you know all of that," says Liam.

The other techs all pause, glancing back at him. Chuck falters, halfway through opening his mouth.

"You know you don't have to lie to keep any of us safe, either," says Liam. "We already know enough to get us in trouble, so...what's going on? Is he making you say any of this?"

"No," says Chuck, immediately, and turns the screen around, showing them Mike's still silhouette. "He doesn't even know we're talking."

"You're still in his _pod?_ " says Liam, and then waves that point away. "—Did he offer you anything?"

"Just..." it sounds dumb, but there isn't really another way to say it. "Just him."

Raoul makes a muffled kind of noise that Chuck can't read—when Chuck glances at him, Raoul is looking the other way, wrapping a few curls of his hair around one finger over and over again in that way that means he has things he isn't saying.

"What?" says Chuck.

"Huh?" says Raoul. "Nothing."

"Bullshit it's—"

"This is fucking stupid," Ben says. "No, kid, I know he's better than what you're used to, but that doesn't make this _good._ Transferring you was a good idea, we need to get you out of where you're at before Chilton gets any more hooks into you. This is stupid, he's a _director._ You know what that means better than anybody."

"Mike's not _getting '_ hooks' into me!" Chuck says, and then catches himself a second too late and feels his face heat up. "I mean—"

"...'Mike'," repeats Rich.

"Director Chilton," Chuck corrects himself, and tries really hard not to shrink under the other techs' eyes. "Listen, nobody wanted me out of the spot I was in more than I did, okay?"

"I believe it," says Ben, "—but go back to the part where you call him 'Mike', because I wanna hear what the hell you think is going on here."

"What I think is going on here is that I got my best friend back!" Chuck says, more loudly than he means to—he stops himself, glances back at the wall; Mike is lying still, apparently still fast asleep. Chuck turns back to the screen and glares at everybody on the other end of the call, lowering his voice to a sharp whisper. "—I grew up with him, I _know_ him, okay?! I thought it was weird he'd turn into somebody like them, and it would be, but it isn't, because he _didn't_!"

"You _grew up_ with Director Chilton?" says Rich. "Like, _Mike Chilton._ Like, the Kane family's golden boy?"

"Yeah," says Chuck defiantly. "And he wouldn't do what they were doing, not if his life depended on it."

"You _grew up with him_?" Rich rakes his hands through his vivid, blood-red hair, looking more than a little bit frantic. "What—when?! How did we not know about this?"

"When I was growing up," Chuck says, because a stupid question deserves a stupid answer, "—and because you didn't ask and I didn't want to talk about it, dude, I thought if I ever saw him again he was going to have turned into one of them, I...forgot what he was like."

"You were into him," says Liam, with a look of dawning realization. A second later his eyes narrow, going from wide and bright to narrow, iron-grey slits. "You _are_ into him. Does he know that?"

"No," says Chuck, half-laughing, "What? No. Mike wouldn't know somebody was into him if they wrote 'fuck me now' on their ass and lay on his bed naked."

"How much would you bet on that?" says Raoul quietly. "You've got a _lot_ at stake. If he knew you were still in love with him—"

"Wh," Chuck says, startled out of his anger. "I'm, wow, okay, I'm not _in love_ with— I mean, Mike's just— Shut the fuck up, dude, you don't know what you're talking about!"

The other techs share a brief, significant look, and Chuck feels his face burning. They won't meet his eyes, faces tight and shoulders tense, casting each other brief, worried looks, and he— _knows_ how it sounds, okay, fuck. Raoul is watching him with something like pity on his face, and it _burns._ "Seriously!" Chuck insists, "I like him, okay, I'd be dumb not to, but I never said I was _in love._ "

"You don't have to," Raoul says tightly. "I'd say it's pretty clear."

"Shove it up your ass," Chuck snarls, knowing full well his blush isn't going down, not knowing what to do about it. "You guys don't know what you're talking about, and I'm not transferring, and I'll come back when I'm good and ready to! He could fix the whole tower single-handed and you wouldn’t believe he’s a good guy, I don't have to defend him to—"

"You want us to believe it?" Ben says, sudden and hard, cutting over him. Chuck cuts off, startled—opens his mouth, and can't think what to say. Ben folds his arms, leans back in his chair and fixes Chuck with that look that makes him feel like a weedy thirteen-year-old again.

"Ben," says Rich tightly. "Come on."

"Tell him you don't want to see him again," says Ben. "Tell him you want to go back to R&D and never see him again, and if he doesn't try to throw his weight around, or threaten you, or— _whatever_ — If he lets you go..." he blows out a breath. "...If he lets you go, maybe I'll believe it."

"Or just push a little bit," Raoul says, with an uncomfortable grimace. "If he'll take a small 'no'—"

"Like fucking— _Carraway_ doesn't know how to handle people who are trying not to get handled!" Ben snaps. "You get a single shred of mercy from these assholes and they turn it around and use it as proof you should have trusted them all along, like they did _you_ a favor for waiting an extra week or two to start fucking your whole life over— Do you think I haven't _fucking seen this before,_ Martinez—?"

"You're not the only one who has," Raoul says, sharp and heavy, and holds his glare. Ben stares at him for a second, then growls and looks away, back up at Chuck.

"They know how to work around a _small no_ ," he says, and Chuck can't shake his head, can't deny it. God, didn't he try enough times at the beginning, twitching away from a hand on his back or his knee, questioning orders, dragging his heels. And they let him, for a while, but every time the concession was smaller, every time he lost a little more ground. "I'm talking about you telling him 'no, not now, not ever', right to his face. If he takes _that,_ maybe I'll believe him—if he brings you back without trying to bully you into staying, or threatening you or pushing you around— But he's not going to, Chuck, he’s gonna fucking— _hurt_ you again—"

"You don't know that," says Chuck, desperate and angry and _hurt,_ somehow. Believing in Mike hurts, and doubting Mike hurts, hearing the others think the worst of Mike hurts, everything just hurts. "And—and you can't tell me to do that, you can't _make_ me do that!"

"No, but if you're still the smart kid I trained, you're gonna do it anyway," says Ben, heavy and certain as stone. He meets Chuck's eyes and holds them, and Chuck wants to look away and can't. "...Because you know you have to, because you _can't_ trust him just because he acted nice and said the right things. Not after the stuff they've done. You can't afford to gamble like that, because if you're wrong, kid...it's gonna kill you this time."

Chuck swipes out with a hand, slams a fist through the screen and glitches it out of existence. He's breathing hard, too hard and too fast, staring at the place where the other techs used to be; his eyes are burning, more stupid tears pushing at the back of his throat.

He pulls his knees up to his chest, drops his forehead down against them and just rocks there for a second, forcing himself to breathe. All the strange, warm ease that was in him is draining away in the face of the other techs' certainty, their _pity_. They think he's a gullible kid who's letting a crush make him stupid, and the worst part is that now he's wondering if they're right.

After an endless, quiet time, he manages to drop his knees and sit up straight again, holds onto his knees and straightens his spine. Breathes in as deep and as slow as he can. He can't sit in the bathroom all night—for one thing, he needs to be out of here before noon or he's never going to catch up on his work. And for another, if Mike wakes up and Chuck is just sitting in the bathroom in a sweater, staring into space, Mike's obviously going to have some...questions.

Chuck creeps back out into the main pod, bangs his shin into a couch in the dark, limps back to the bed hissing under his breath. Mike shifts in his sleep and then rolls onto his side as Chuck kneels down on the side of the mattress, opening up a space next to him with a sleepy, welcoming murmur. Chuck hesitates, fighting himself, then groans softly and kneels on the mattress, lets Mike gather him up. He's still clumsy with sleep, tugging at Chuck with uncoordinated eagerness until he's got his face in Chuck's neck, an arm around Chuck's chest.

"...Hey, buddy," he murmurs against Chuck's collarbone, and gives him a gentle squeeze. "Everything cool? I h— _Hhh..._ " the word splits into massive yawn. "...Hhheard yelling..."

"Just talking to some friends," says Chuck, and dares to let himself press his face into Mike's hair, breathing it in. He doesn't smell like multi-purpose Security cleaning solution anymore; his hair smells really good, warm and faintly spicy, only a little bit sweaty. "...'S fine. Go back to sleep."

Mike makes a vague, agreeable noise, and then breathes out long and slow and goes still again. He's pretty tall, taller than he used to be, but he still feels small and solid and warm in Chuck's arms.

It feels like there's no possible way Chuck is going to fall asleep again, but apparently he's still more exhausted than he thought because at some point the slow, even rhythm of Mike's breathing lulls him into a restless doze.

He wakes up because an alarm is going off somewhere nearby, and because Mike's hold on him shifts, tightens, goes still. Mike takes a few careful breaths, and then his hand finds Chuck's back, his neck, runs gently over his hair.

"...You're still here," Mike says, soft and almost wondering.

God, fuck. "...Morning," Chuck mumbles, and Mike laughs quietly like he said something funny and rolls over onto his elbow to wrap an arm around Chuck, giving him a long, warm squeeze.

"Nice sweater, dude," Mike says, and pushes himself up, throwing himself into a long, luxurious stretch that shows off _way_ too much bare skin. The blankets are just about covering the important parts, but Chuck's getting some really risque flashes of thigh and the curve of Mike's spine is something _gorgeous_ , fuck. This would be a goddamn dream come true if everything wasn't awful and on fire right now. "You want some breakfast?"

"...Not really hungry," says Chuck—which is true, honestly, he hasn't had any appetite for literal weeks. Sometimes he manages to force some food down his throat, but if Mike sees him picking at his food he might want to know why, and Chuck really just can't face answering any questions. He saw the way Mike looked at him when he took Chuck's shirt off last night, the worry and pity he smiled away a second later. Chuck's always been skinny, but being able to count every single one of his ribs is a new development, even for him.

"You should eat something," Mike says, and he doesn't say it like it's an order, but Chuck's nodding before he has time to think about it, a knee-jerk reaction. He manages to hold in a deferential " _yes, sir_ ", but only barely. Mike doesn't notice his internal turmoil; just grins at his acquiescence and bounces up out of bed, jogging across the pod like he's not totally butt-naked. He pauses for a second to tap out a message on a personal comm screen, and then heads over and starts fiddling with the requisitions panel.

It's weird, and kind of uncomfortable, having him be vulnerable like this. It makes Chuck's stomach prickle uneasily, makes anxiety creep up his spine—like there's a trap in this somewhere, like he's expected to avert his eyes or protest or offer Mike his clothes or something.

"Uh," he manages, squeaky, and clears his throat. "...You know the...the windows are all set to 0%, right?"

"Huh?" says Mike, and then glances down at himself and laughs a little self-consciously. "Oh, shoot, dude, I—uh." He pulls a pair of underwear out of the printer, keys in some more orders and bends down to pull them on. He doesn't have much in the way of a butt, but wow what he does have sure is right there and naked. Chuck swallows and tries to figure out if he's allowed to look, if he's _supposed_ to look, what the fuck is even going on.

Mike is still talking as he gets dressed, apparently oblivious. "...I don't have a pod-mate anymore, and mine flies high enough it's not like anybody can see in—unless Ms. Kane wanted to look out her window, I guess, uh—" he falters on the words, and his face goes a little bit pink. "—Anyway, it's been a while since I thought about it," he finishes, and pulls pants and a plain white T-shirt out of the printer. "And you saw everything pretty much—I mean, you'd already seen everything, we walked in on each other naked enough times. But, y'know." he pulls on the T-shirt, which...wow, yeah, he still wears them...really tight—and turns back to Chuck with a rueful kind of grin.

"I didn't mean to make you feel weird, is what I'm saying," he finishes, and tucks his dog-tags into his shirt. "Uh... I'll just order a little bit of everything, and you can just take what you're hungry for. Okay?"

Chuck nods slowly, and watches through unfocused eyes as Mike heads back to his pod controls and starts typing things in, flicking through directories. He wants...he _really_ wants, he wants to believe this. He wants it so badly it feels like he's dying, the way Mike smiles at him, the promises he made last night, but he keeps hearing his friends' voices in his head. _They feed you a line about how they'll treat you right. We need to get you out. It's gonna kill you this time._

"I..." Chuck says, tiny and cracked. Mike glances over, and whatever he sees on Chuck's face makes his hands falter, that worried crease comes back between his brows.

"Yeah?" he says. "You okay?"

"I can't...can't stay for breakfast," Chuck says, one painful word at a time. "I can't— I gotta go."

He feels his chest tighten at the transparent way Mike's face falls, the surprise and then the worry and then the distress before he hastily pulls a smile back up. "Oh!" says Mike, bright and unconvincing. "Yeah, that— Yeah, okay. I'll see you...later? After work?"

Chuck hesitates, but goddammit, Ben is right. He has to know.

"I gotta go _,_ " Chuck repeats, and wraps his arms around himself, eyes dropping to the floor "And... I can't, I don't _want_ —to come back."

Mike doesn't respond for a long second. Chuck keeps his eyes fixed on the ground, breathing unevenly, waiting for the rebuke or a hand grabbing his arm again. But Mike keeps not saying anything, and not saying anything, and—

"I," says Mike, small and helpless-sounding. "I'm sorry, what did I— I mean..."

Fuck, if he's acting he's...agonizingly good at it. Chuck opens his mouth to say _sorry I just had to check, sorry, it's fine_ —and hesitates. Feels a hand on his arm, hears a soft, smiling voice in his ear, _I'm sorry darlin', didn't realize you were shy. I'll keep my hands to myself._ It feels like he's safe, like he's being listened to, but it's felt like that before.

"I need to go back to my pod," Chuck repeats, doing his best to keep his voice from shaking. "Please."

"But—" Director Chilton rakes a hand through his hair, stops, moves again, a jerky half-step forward. Chuck jerks back, heart hammering in his throat, and Director Chilton backs up too, pulling his hands back in tight. "What if— But I thought—" he stops, staring at Chuck, eyes wide and lost. "Why?"

"Please," Chuck repeats, helplessly. "It's...a residential pod, Kane Co. tower 5266, or—just in R&D, at Data Management, I don't care but just, _please._ "

Mike stares at him for another long, wordless second, and then turns away sharply, turns back to the pod controls, head low and shoulders tight, walking in fast, jerky strides.

"Data Management," he says, low and brief. "...'Kay."

Chuck fights himself all the way to the tower, stomach churning as he stares at Mike's back. Some part of him—the part that melted when Mike kissed him last night, the part that feels helplessly warm and desperate when Mike says things like _I'll keep you safe_ and _I promise, you'll be okay_ —is pushing at him, tight and nauseating in his gut. Whispering _you hurt him, you're hurting him, he means it, he's not like them._ The rest of him...

Webb pretended he'd had a change of heart, once. Started running interference for Chuck at meetings, "distracting" the other directors, staying behind to look after him when they messed him up anyway. Carraway had gotten in on it, playing his stupid fucking mind games, getting gentler as Larsson got crueler, pretending he cared, acting like he was listening. And then the _second_ Chuck started to trust them, started to hope somebody was going to fix it, he'd found out about the videos, about Carraway working him up on purpose so he'd break down for them and then Webb filming, streaming it to Larsson so he could get off on it.

It's not— People _lie,_ people who want to own other people, they say whatever will get them what they want, and it's not—if he's lying, if Mike is _lying_ about this, Chuck fucking _knows_ Ben is right. It would kill him, this time. It would be so, so much worse.

 _technician_337913_ : im coming back

 _technician_337913_ : dt mgt working floor

He doesn’t stop and wait to see any responses. It’s early morning—a lot of the people in the department who have actually gotten sleep tonight are probably still asleep, and the ones that aren’t will just be starting in on their work-day, but as long as just...as long as one person can be there, somebody Chuck can go to and just, be with, instead of arriving alone with Director Chilton—he only needs one. Just in case.

Director Chilton doesn’t bother to announce their arrival. Just steps forward, as the pod docks, and presses a hand to the window. It integrates with the tower window, yields to his touch and slides open.

Chuck was hoping there would be somebody there to keep him from having a breakdown in the middle of R&D if Director Chilton tried anything—in retrospect he’s a dumbass and there’s no way he should be surprised to see both of his supervisors, Rich _and_ Liam all standing in a tight cluster with their heads together, apparently waiting for him. A few of the others in the chat who don’t know Chuck quite as well are lingering on the periphery as well, leaning would-be-casually on cubicles or against walls; Chuck can tell who they are, because when he steps inside, every single one of their heads goes up and their eyes all fix on him.

Chuck raises a hand, attempting a lukewarm smile, and then feels it crack and slide off his face as Director Chilton steps out of the pod behind him. Ben and Raoul go still, watching him like he's a bomb about to blow. Rich has frozen in place, doing his best impression of part of the wall. Liam—

Liam crosses the room at a fast, jerky half-run, grabs Chuck's wrist and tugs on it, pulling him away from Director Chilton so fast he stumbles. Director Chilton makes a brief move like he’s going to reach for Chuck’s shoulder—Liam gives Chuck one last push and steps directly into his way, with a smile like a knife.

“Director Chilton!” he says brightly. "Thank you for returning him to the department, sir, we'll take it from—"

For a second, Chuck doesn't get why he cut off—then he follows Liam's eyes and finds the wrist Liam is holding onto, the bruises still damningly clear against his skin. Sees Liam's eyes go from the bruises to Chuck's face, sees him catch Chuck's guilty, unintentional glance back towards Mike, sees Liam pull himself up, eyes flashing. Oh man, oh fuck, oh no—

"Liam—" Chuck starts, but Liam doesn't listen when he's angry, and he's drawing himself up to his full height, fists white-knuckled at his sides. "Liam, _wait._ "

"No," says Liam, voice cracking and hard with fury. "I want to hear what he thinks he—!"

Chuck catches his arm, hauls him back with main strength and holds on to him tight enough it must ache. Liam falters, rage interrupted by shock, and Chuck takes his hands instead of his shoulders, holds onto them, squeezes. “Don't," he says, soft and desperate, "Please don't, dude."

Director Chilton makes a quiet noise behind him, but whatever he’s thinking he doesn’t say. He doesn’t seem inclined to get Liam in trouble, either, or at least he doesn’t say anything about it if he is. "...A recorder drone will come to take your statements tomorrow," he says instead, and his voice is even and blank again, like it was at the party. Chuck can't turn around and look at him, he _can't._ He nods instead, mumbles something like _yes sir._ "I'll see myself out."

The other techs watch him go with guarded uncertainty until he’s out of sight. Chuck can’t watch—just holds onto Liam, stares at their hands and breathes. It’s over, Director Chilton let him go, he’s _safe._ At least for now, he’s safe.

“Fuckin’ A, baby boy,” Rich says finally, and stops imitating a wall to come loom behind Liam’s back instead, more than a foot taller and broad enough to cut Chuck off from the alarmed, startled stares being aimed his way. Chuck glances up at him, still breathing hard, eyes wide, and Rich hesitates and then reaches out over Liam’s head and gives Chuck’s shaved head a few nervous, awkward pats. “Uh. You okay?”

“What happened?” Raoul says. He looks exhausted, there’s a tight, twitchy stress in the way his hands pick at his clothes and hair and mustache. “You were gone a long time, did he hurt you?”

“I’ll say he did,” Liam growls, and wraps his hands delicately around Chuck’s wrist, examining the bruises. His anger is starting to burn out again now that it’s been stymied—concern is rapidly overtaking it.

“I’m fine,” Chuck mumbles, and works his wrist free, folding his arms to hide the bruises. “Look— I did it, okay. I told him, I said ‘no’, he dropped me off. ‘S done.”

“What, seriously?” says Rich incredulously. “Whoa. No wonder he looked like he just ate a plate of expired throat cubes.”

Chuck hears Ben make a noise, somewhere nearby—a soft little growl. He doesn’t add anything though, and when Chuck looks up all he sees is Ben’s back, the dark whip of his ponytail as he turns between two cubicles and disappears. Chuck stares after him, feeling something weird and hard and unidentifiable squeeze his chest, and then looks down again, around at his friends. Raoul is looking after Ben as well, frowning—Rich and Liam don’t seem to have noticed he’s gone.

“When’s the last time you ate?” Liam says, is saying, as Chuck starts listening again. “Or drank anything?”

Chuck stares past him, blinking slowly. “I ate at the party,” he says. Doesn’t add, _Carraway hand-fed me so he could stick his fingers in my mouth._ His thoughts are dragging, now, slower and more painful. God, he’s tired. All he wants to do is get out of here, avoid anybody else coming over to ask cautiously how he is, what he needs, if he’s hurt. He doesn’t want to answer any of those questions.

Raoul opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, then glances down as his pager beeps. He pulls up a data screen and stares tiredly at the message on it, and then looks back at Chuck and sighs. “I’ll check on you later, kid,” he says, and gives Chuck’s arm a brief squeeze before hurrying off, pulling up his comms.

“Come on,” Rich says, and puts an arm really carefully around Chuck’s shoulders, like he’s worried Chuck’s come back made of brittle glass. Being tender isn’t his strong suit, and Chuck’s really not feeling much of anything right now, but some part of him is distantly touched that Rich is trying. The other part of him wants to shudder away from the feeling of a tall, broad body pressed against his and a heavy arm around him. Rich is broader than Carraway, the same height as Chuck, he’s not quite the same, but he’s close enough some instinctive little part of Chuck is waiting for the hand on his shoulder to slide to the small of his back, smug and possessive.

He’s learned better than to respond when his body wants him to pull away, anyway. It’s pointless, all it does is worry the people who don’t deserve it and piss off the people who do. Chuck swallows down the urge and meekly lets himself be led around the edge of the cubicles, cutting through the back corner of the department to the break room. Lets himself be settled down in a chair. Takes the glass of water he’s given with numb hands.

“I think we have some food from...downstairs,” Liam says, and turns to root in the fridge, picking almost feverishly through the little packages of heavily-disguised smuggled food. “You should have—”

“No,” says Chuck quietly, and takes a reluctant sip of his water. It tastes like nothing, makes his stomach turn. It feels like there’s a rock taking up all the space in there, threatening to send anything he tries to force down right back up again. He’s used to the feeling by now. He should be hungry, yeah, sure, but he’s not, and it wouldn’t be the first time he tried to force himself to eat and then ended up curled up in the bathroom an hour later, retching. He’s thirsty, but he can’t— He can’t.

"You need to eat," says Liam, and rubs the back of Chuck's neck, watching him with big, grey, worried eyes. "Come on, hon, just a bite or two at least."

"Not hungry," says Chuck, and stands up again, reeling a little. Leans on the chair to avoid going over as the by-now-familiar throb of dizziness washes over him. Sets the cup of water carefully down. "I'm...really tired. I'm gonna go get some sleep."

"Chuck—" Rich says, and falters at the look Chuck gives him. Drags a hand through his deep red hair and manages, "...Dude, you look like hell, we're just worried about—"

"I'm tired," Chuck repeats, and shuffles past him, head down, not meeting his eyes. "Just need some sleep."

He can almost feel them share a glance behind him—hears Rich mumble "... _Fuck_ ," softly under his breath, but doesn't stop to listen. Doesn't really care. He's so fucking tired, just, so totally exhausted, he just wants to curl up under his blankets and never have to wake up again.

He gets all the way to his cubicle, turns on the privacy screen, closes down his workstation, and then turns around and kind of shrieks, because Ben is sitting in the corner staring at him.

"What—?!" Chuck says, wheezing, and waves a hand at Ben's entire...everything. "What?! Fuck!"

Ben doesn't answer for a long minute. His arms are crossed over his belly, his dark brows are drawn very low.

"...You didn't follow through, kid," he says, finally.

God, it's about Mike. Of fucking _course_ it's about Mike. Chuck gives Ben his most exhausted, least impressed glower and walks right past him to throw himself down on his cot, turning pointedly away from him. It almost feels good, shock and anger putting a brief, thin gloss over the other things going on inside him right now.

“This is—you can't just—” Ben breaks off, growling under his breath. “You did it, you cut him off, that's great—”

“Yeah,” Chuck says, flat and rough, without turning. He doesn’t—he doesn’t need to examine how he feels right now, doesn’t need to look any closer at the aching knot tied up in his chest. He _definitely_ doesn’t need to talk about it, especially not to Ben. He honestly doesn’t even know why the guy’s trying, it’s not like he enjoys talking about feelings and shit at the best of times. “It’s great. Feels great.”

Ben growls a lot louder at that. “I _know_ , kid, it's pretty obvious! You're fucking miserable, so what're you gonna _do_ about it?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Chuck growls back, and pulls his blanket up over himself, barely resisting the urge to cover his head with it like a whiny toddler. “Lie here and cry about it, what do you _fucking_ care?”

That gets a pause, like Ben is—taken aback or pissed off or something, who knows. Then he takes a long breath and says with elaborate patience, “Well, you wanna know how he's going to react to this, don't you? I mean sure, you could _wait_ like three weeks and see if he tries to push the limits, contact you, call you in or something—or you could just… check and see.”

Chuck lies there for a second, staring dully at the wall, and then blinks as those words penetrate the miserable fog that’s taken up residence where his brain usually is. He rolls over, pushes himself up and frowns at Ben, who frowns right back at him.

“...Okay, fine,” Chuck says. “I give, okay, just—what are you talking about?”

Ben doesn't say anything, just raises a comm screen with a line already open and flicks it over to Chuck. Chuck snags it, bewildered, and stares down at it—the image is blank. The sound from the other end is mostly just...somebody breathing, kind of hoarsely.

“If this is some kind of joke,” Chuck mutters, after a second. “—Then you picked a stupid goddamn time—”

“ _Shit,_ ” says a voice suddenly, soft and rough on the other end of the line. Chuck looks down at the screen, startled—it’s still blank, all the input from Chuck’s end is muted and the picture is dark. From the active end of the call, there’s the sound of cloth rustling, and then loud, fast footsteps. “Shit,” the voice says again, louder this time. It sounds choked, strange and thick, and it takes Chuck a second to realize whose voice it is. When he does, he feels his heart plummet to somewhere around his shoes.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Mike hisses to himself somewhere on the other end of the call—there’s a bang, like he kicked something over—another few seconds of panting silence, and then more rapid footsteps, fast pacing.

Chuck stares down at the screen, bewildered and freaked out and—fucking _hurt,_ he doesn’t need to hear this, god, it feels like the dull knot in his chest is slowly growing thorns and digging into his ribs. He looks up at Ben, lips pressed tight together to keep them from trembling, to hold in any stupid, unwanted noises. He can’t get the question out like that, but maybe Ben sees it in his eyes.

Ben sighs heavily. “Yeah, it's his comm. I got into it, eh, ten minutes ago maybe, he's been like this.” He shrugs a shoulder. “Well, started out a lot quieter.” He presses his lips together, eyes slipping away from Chuck's, and glares at the opposite wall. “ _I_ needed to know, one way or the other.”

Chuck stares at him numbly for a second, then looks down at the screen again, curling around it a little, minimizing it until he can cup it in his hands. Mike has gone back to breathing roughly on the other end—rustling sounds of movement every so soften, and then another tight curse, clumsy and unpracticed and all the more awful for it. Chuck can _hear_ him winding himself up, breathing harder and faster, pacing more, doing more things that bang and clatter, and Chuck can’t move, can’t breathe, listening to him.

“Stupid— _fucking_ —” Mike rasps. “Messed it up, he— No _wonder_ he doesn’t— _fuck!_ _Idiot!_ ”

Chuck looks down at the screen, back up at Ben. Opens his mouth and doesn’t know what to say. The fog hasn’t left his head, but it feels pressurized now, a heavy throb behind his eyes and a strangling weight in the back of his throat.

“...There’s no—” he gets out, and his voice comes out a tiny, thready whisper, wet and shaky. “He doesn’t—can’t, he can’t know, there’s no way he knows you got into his comms?”

Ben snorts, but his voice is quieter than it would normally be when he says, “Come on, kid, who do you take me for? Of course not.”

Chuck can’t answer that. He drops his head down onto his knees, takes shaky breaths against them, listens to Mike breathing in awful, jerky gasps, letting out furious, disjointed fragments of curses.

He quiets down again after a long, awful minute or two—the pacing footsteps stop, his breathing goes long and measured until it doesn’t tremble at all. For a little while, there’s no sound at all, and Chuck is just starting to take his own deep breaths, trying to pull himself together, when a little notification pops up on the comm screen and the faint sound of another comm ringing echoes through the one in Chuck’s hands.

Ben frowns, raises another little screen. “Not that it should show up, especially sending,” he mutters, “but—” His eyes widen abruptly. “Oh shit. Uh. Huh.”

“What?” Chuck says miserably, and then closes his mouth as Director Chilton clears his throat roughly.

“...Ms. Kane,” he says, and Chuck’s heart goes from somewhere in the area of his feet, all the way up to his throat. He trades a wide-eyed look with Ben, who seems to have gone motionless and intent like an animal that knows there’s a predator nearby. Chuck can’t hear whatever Ms. Kane says, but it makes Director Chilton let out a brief, sharp noise like a really awful laugh. “No,” he says, flat and cool and even, locked down. “He—no. I dropped him off. He—didn’t want to stay.”

Ben straightens abruptly, focusing, as Chuck winces. Ms. Kane must say something, because Director Chilton is quiet for a little while—eventually, he takes a slow breath and says “...Yes ma’am. I understand that. Everything’s under control. Ma’am. He’s not—” he stops, starts again, cold and steady. “It won’t be a problem, Ms. Kane, I’ll...handle the situation.”

A cold, sick spiral of old fear trickles down Chuck’s spine. He stares at the screen, too frozen to blink, to breathe, just listening. _He won’t be a problem, I’ll handle the situation—_ god, no, _fuck,_ no—

“I don’t know, ma’am,” says Director Chilton. “He didn’t say— I-I don’t know.” He’s silent for a long, tight second, and then he bursts out, “—He’s _scared_ of me, Julie.”

The fear clashes abruptly with some kind of weird, awful hope, mixes with the pain in Chuck’s chest, the anxious, breathless feeling of his heart beating in his throat. He hears himself make an awful little moaning noise, barely coherent enough to be a curse, but he isn’t listening to his own mouth, he’s too glued to the tiny screen hovering in his hands.

“I know!” Mike is—Director Chilton is saying, louder now like he’s talking over somebody—like he’s talking over _Ms. Kane,_ cold professionalism cracking and wavering. “I know, do you think I don’t— He _doesn’t,_ though, he thinks I’m like _them,_ he thinks— Fuck— The way he _looked_ at me, I—” and the word breaks audibly, unmistakably, _awfully_ , into a cracked sob.

“Right,” Ben says flat and tight. “Fuck this—stupid _bullshit_. Come on, kid, shut that down before it breaks you up worse than you already are.” He stands up, his screen blinking out, and crosses his arms, raising expectant eyebrows at Chuck.

Chuck stares up at him, numb and blank. “I,” he says. There’s so many feelings going on inside him right now it’s hard to think through them, they’re all turning into one deafening, overpowering roar like hard static. He can still hear Mike through it, though, hear him choking on the words _don’t know what I did wrong I just messed it up I’m so fucking_ stupid— Chuck’s hands are so tight on the screen his fingers are dipping through it, fizzing and sparking. “What?”

Ben's sigh comes out half a groan. He reaches Chuck in two strides and dismisses the comm screen with a flick of his fingers, Mike's voice cutting out mid-word.

“Come _on_ ,” Ben says, grabbing Chuck by the arm and hauling. “Do you want to fix this or what?”

“What?” says Chuck, staring at the place the screen used to be—up at Ben’s face, bewildered. “ _What?_ Fix— Fuck, weren’t you—he’s not gonna just— I _fucked up_ , what am I supposed to say, _haha I was just kidding—_ ”

“ _You_ didn't fuck up,” Ben says fiercely, and pulls again. Chuck finally staggers to his feet, gives his arm a rebellious tug and is summarily ignored. “ _I_ fucked up, which is why we're going back over there right now to—fix his broken heart. Your broken heart, whoever’s, I don’t give a fuck, but we’re _fixing it_.” He starts towards the door, dragging Chuck with him. “You can tell him that your paranoid fucking coworker gave you some extremely shitty advice, and I guarantee you he'll forgive you on the spot. Fuck, he'll probably do it the minute you show up.”

“But,” Chuck gets out. “I mean— _ow,_ fuck—” of course Ben’s got a hold of the wrist that’s already bruised, that just about figures right now. “—He’s got executive clearance, he flies his pod all the way up above the tower, we can’t just _march in there_ —you don’t even know where he is, where are we _going?_ ”

“Over here,” Ben says, hurrying down the corridor between cubicles, which doesn't actually answer anything, but then he makes a couple of turns and pulls Chuck into an empty cubicle with a nice view of Deluxe through the clear outside wall. Then he finally lets go of Chuck and raises a comm screen without even looking at him.

The line rings for a while. Chuck opens his mouth to ask, and Ben throws him a sharp, narrow-eyed look of annoyance. _Quiet, kid._ He looks about as nervous as Chuck’s ever seen him, which is to say irritable and restless, fingers tapping and arms crossed as the line rings.

It picks up audio-only, after an interminable amount of time, and Chuck lets out a very soft squeak of horror when a flat, ragged voice says “...This is Director Chilton. This had better be an emergency.”

Ben glares at the screen and licks his lips. “Yes, sir,” he says carefully, very level. “It's come to my attention that I fucked up a good thing with you and Chuck, and I wanted to apologize. I thought I had reason to suspect—” he stops, shakes his head sharply. “Whatever, anyway—it was my idea, not Chuck's, and if you could—”

For a second Chuck isn’t sure why he stopped, apart from maybe how Chuck is staring at him with his mouth open like Ben just started speaking in tongues—except Ben’s not looking at him. He’s looking past Chuck, at the view outside the window.

“I don’t know what you think you know about—any of this,” says Mike’s voice roughly, flat and tired, and Chuck turns back to the window just in time to see the executive pod with its whited-out windows seal seamlessly to the side of the tower, the window sliding open with a faint, papery hiss. A figure in a rumpled uniform stepping through with a comm screen in its hand. “But you better tell me what you’re talking about, _real_ fast—”

Mike looks up from the comm screen, and meets Chuck’s eyes head-on, catches there like he can’t look away and just— _stares._ His expression flickers; shock and then hope and then hurt and then confusion and then a kind of dull, guarded weariness. For a second it looks like he’s going to say something to Chuck—then he takes a slow breath through his nose and looks past him instead.

“...What is this?” he says flatly. “He doesn’t want to see me, I’ve _got it,_ okay. Why did you—make him do this?”

Ben sighs deeply. “He _does_ , actually,” he says, ending the call. “And come _on_ , ki—uh, sir, you've gotta know a little of how they were fucking with him, the shit they did to his head—”

“ _Ben,_ ” mumbles Chuck, and resists the incredibly dumb urge to roll up into a ball on the floor. “It’s not—I’m not—”

“It is,” says Ben, with a brief glare at him, “and you are. So, sir,” he goes on, looking back at Mike, “I didn't want to see it happen again, and I didn't have any proof you weren't gonna do that, so—” he takes a breath, “I told him to test you. Which it turns out was utterly shitty advice, but also you passed with flying colors, so, uh—” He gestures to Chuck like he's presenting him and takes a step back. “You kids have fun.”

He turns hastily to go, and Chuck sees Mike’s eyes focus on his face, feels something dangerously close to panic rise up in his chest and grabs out after him, catching hold of Ben’s arm and holding on tight with both hands. Ben startles and glances back at him, looking a weird combination of affronted, betrayed and profoundly uncomfortable that would be...honestly pretty hilarious, if Chuck wasn’t in danger of falling completely apart. The concept of trying to face Mike alone right now makes him feel cold and sick and flushed and awful, and he gives Ben a wide-eyed, pleading look and just kind of...holds on.

Ben sighs again, shoulders slumping, and turns glumly back to face Mike, who’s alternating staring at Ben and staring at Chuck like he doesn’t have the slightest idea what the hell is going on. Which—honestly, he probably doesn’t.

“I had to,” Chuck gets out, squeaky and pathetic, and swallows hard. “It wasn’t all his...his fault, I thought I had to, I didn’t know if I could—” god, he doesn’t want to talk about the thing with Webb and Carraway, he doesn’t want to see the way _either_ of them would look at him. “...I’m sorry.”

“I,” Mike says, quiet and cracked, and drags a hand down his face, rubs it briefly past his eyes. When he raises his head again, Chuck is suddenly, terribly aware of how red his eyes look, how deep the shadows under them are. “But—it was all— It was a _test_?”

“Sorry,” says Chuck again, and edges just a little bit to one side, because he knows—he _knows,_ Mike’s not like that, but he’s so fucking scared right now he’s sick to his stomach. Feeling just the faintest brush of a warm, solid shoulder against his is enough to take the wild edge off the fear. “I’m really, really sorry.”

Mike’s face is blank, still, breaths fast and shallow, a muscle working in his jaw. He looks away when he sees Chuck looking at him. Crosses his arms, although with the way his shoulders are hunching it looks more like he’s hugging himself than anything else, hands rubbing jerkily past his upper arms.

“...Mike?” says Chuck tentatively, and Mike twitches.

“I thought,” he gets out, brief and hoarse, and bites off the words. Starts again. “I was trying so— _freakin’ hard,_ so you’d know I’m not—” He shudders a little. “What made you think this was _okay,_ dude?!”

Chuck wilts, cold misery drowning the tentative hope in his chest. Ben growls softly under his breath—a heavy hand lands on Chuck’s shoulder, pulling him back, as Ben very deliberately steps in front of him.

“He didn’t think it was okay,” he says grimly, and Director Chilton gives him a hard-edged glare, lips pressed into a thin line and breath coming fast and rough. “I made him think it was his only option, though, and if you’re gonna get mad at somebody about it then for fuck’s sake—” he falters on the words, then apparently gives up on trying to fix it and just finishes, “...get mad at somebody who deserves it. Don’t yell at the kid, he’s had a hard enough day already.”

“I _am_ mad at you!” growls Director Chilton, with a jerky wave of one hand. His voice is rising, like it did on his comm—like it did before he started crying, and god, if he starts crying again Chuck is going to die. Or run, or—he just can’t handle that. “I can be mad at both of you! I— This is— I thought I seriously messed something up, I thought I— _hurt_ him, or something, like I did something _they_ did by accident, and he wouldn’t tell me what, and—!”

He bites off the word, stops himself, reaches up and rubs at his eyes with a hand that seems to shake slightly.

“...I thought you _got_ it,” he says to Chuck, and oh god his voice is starting to break, “you said you knew, you said _yes,_ I’m not a— I’m _not like them,_ you told me you _knew_ that!” He drags in a shaking breath, eyes bright and wet, and abruptly turns on his heel.

“Shoot,” he mumbles, and shakes his head. “Just. Gimme a second.”

He walks quickly back to the wall, steps through into his pod. The wall goes opaque, sealing behind him.

Chuck slumps, trembling all over. Ben blows out a long breath and kind of does the same thing, combing a hand back over his hair.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Sorry,” says Chuck, on instinct, and Ben shoots him a glare that mostly just looks tired.

“Stop saying that, kid.”

Chuck opens his mouth to say “sorry!” again, and then closes it. Ben nods, gives him a rough pat on the back, and then looks back at the smooth, opaque wall between them and Director Chilton.

“...Huh,” he says. “Uh… How long do you think—”

The door opens again. Ben and Chuck both jump in a way that would be objectively hilarious if Chuck’s heart wasn’t hammering somewhere in the back of his throat, and Director Chilton comes striding back out of the pod, walking fast, head down.

“You didn’t—” he starts, and chokes a little on the words. Stops, straightens his back and raises his chin. Tries again, tight and thick like...like he sounded when they were kids, when he broke his arm. When he wanted to be too tough to cry. “So. You’re not leaving. And if— You’re not gonna do that again, just, leave without telling me why, you’re not gonna do that?”

“What?” says Chuck, and then “No!”

“Oh, for fucks sake,” Ben says despairingly, “of _course_ he won’t. You should've heard him snapping at us when we tried to tell him to be careful about you, he wouldn’t shut up about how you were different and nice and hot stuff and—”

“ _Ben,_ ” Chuck squeaks, for a completely different reason this time. He shoots a quick look at Mike, dreading what he’ll see, and then falters because Mike is looking directly back at him, and this time he’s starting to smile. It’s an awful, shy little hopeful smile, there’s a kind of...strange, slow joy, dawning in it, and it’s all aimed at _Chuck,_ and he can hardly fucking handle it. All of that, pinned on him, it’s—a lot.

“...Good,” says Mike, quiet and rough, but warm, now. “That’s— I am. Different, I, I will be.” He steps forward hesitantly—again, when Chuck holds his ground. Glances past Chuck at Ben, brows furrowing, and kind of ducks his head in a weird little questioning nod. Like he’s not sure if he’s _allowed,_ which is patently fucking ridiculous.

Ben rolls his eyes. “Go on, dumbass,” he tells Chuck, detaching himself from Chuck's grip, “kiss him or whatever.” He puts a hand on Chuck's back and shoves. Chuck staggers forward with a yelp and then finds himself abruptly fetched up on a solid, warm pair of shoulders as Mike rushes forward to meet him, catching his weight, holding on.

“You don’t have to,” Mike says fervently, but his free hand is on Chuck’s cheek, his hair, the back of his neck, his eyes are flickering wide and hopeful across Chuck’s face. “You don’t—”

Chuck doesn’t let him finish those words. Mike makes one last, sobbing little sound against his lips and then melts into him, kissing him back until Chuck is breathless with it.

“Right,” Ben says from somewhere in the distance behind Chuck. “Good, I'm out, have fun, use protection, bye,” and hurried footsteps leave the cubicle. Chuck isn’t listening. It’s all slowly starting to fall together in his head—it’s _real_ , it’s _okay,_ Mike seems too good to be true and he’s exactly as good as he seems, and Chuck gets to kiss him and he didn’t fuck it up and there’s no more meetings, no more dinners, no more _directors,_ and—

Things kind of fall apart after that—Chuck is vaguely aware that he’s laughing, that he’s crying, that he absolutely can’t stop kissing Mike despite either of those things, until Mike gives him a gentle push and gets a hold of his shoulders and goes “Dude—wait, are you okay?” Which is a _stupid fucking question,_ Chuck’s _phenomenal_.

“I’m great!” he gets out, high and cracked and wet, much louder than he means to. “I’m— I thought I was—” He shakes his head, goes back in for another kiss, and Mike lets him, looking kind of worried but not pushing him away. Catches his shoulders as Chuck sways, and helps them both down onto the ground, kneeling together.

“...I get it,” he says, fast and quiet before Chuck can kiss him again. “I do, I know I’m....on the Board, and you haven’t been… I get it.” He blows out a breath and leans forward to bump his forehead against Chuck’s shoulder, just holding on tight for a second. "...I would let you go," he says, and even muffled and soft he sounds so certain it’s breathtaking. "I'd do whatever you need me to do, dude. Last night—"

"I know—"

" _Last night..._ " Mike cuts over him, raising his head. His eyes still look all bruised, red and too bright. "I meant everything I said. Okay? Everything."

"Everything" was...a lot. Chuck swallows and stares at him, trying to surround that, and then jumps hard and lets out a really embarrassing little shriek as somebody knocks on the wall of the cubicle sharply and calls “—Chuck?”

“Oh, uh,” says Mike.

“Miguel said that Eric said that Karim saw Ben take you in here,” Liam is saying, as Chuck wheezes and tries to settle his heartrate. “But Ben came out and you weren’t back in your cube, so—”

“Liam, don’t freak out!” Chuck says urgently. “It’s fine!”

“...What’s fine,” says Liam suspiciously. “You only say that when it’s _not_ fine. I’m coming in.”

“Okay but—”

It’s too late. Liam is elbowing his way into the cubicle, with Rich trailing behind him like an incredibly uncomfortable ultra-golem being towed by a security drone. They see Mike at the same moment; Rich lets out a strangled curse and stops dead in his tracks, and Liam’s eyes go wide and then narrow to icy slits.

“Uh...hi,” says Mike—not unfriendly, but definitely not enthusiastic. Chuck is abruptly aware, this close, of how exhausted he looks; unshaven, rumpled and kind of gray with fatigue.

“Oh,” says Liam, and he _does_ sound unfriendly. “You’re back.”

“Ben called him,” Chuck says quickly. Liam’s eyebrows rise, Rich breathes out slow and soft, hissing between his teeth. “Guys—he’s _good,_ okay? I told you he was good, he—”

“Chilton,” says Liam. Rich whaps him urgently on the arm—Liam frowns, then grits out, “— _Director_ Chilton. Why didn’t you fix this.”

“He did,” Chuck objects.

“Why didn’t you fix this _sooner?_ ” Liam says, unswayed.

“He means, uh,” Rich says, but Mike is already nodding, breathing steady against Chuck’s side, hand tight on his arm.

“I didn’t know about it,” he says. “I just—I didn’t know. If I did, I would’ve. But they—”

“You expect me to believe you had no idea this was happening?” Liam says sharply. “You have to have known something was up.”

“I knew they took long dinners on the company budget,” Mike says. “I thought that was all, that was as far as they’d push it, mooching off Kane Co., getting free stuff— But it kept them out of our way, out of...of my way, and Ms. Kane’s, if we let them have their stupid _lunches,_ their parties and stuff.” He swallows, eyes sliding away. “We...thought that was all they were doing.”

“There are rumors, down here,” Rich puts in, quieter but no less pointed. “R&D knows something’s up. You can’t act like Security doesn’t.”

“Security—?” Mike waves a hand, half a bitter laugh on the word. “Shoot, dude, Security—people throw stuff like that around all the time! They’re always pushing each other around in locker rooms, making stupid jokes about blowing your officers for promotions—how many times do you think I heard them—I mean, after Mr. Kane started promoting me, what do you _think_ they said?”

“...Oh, huh,” says Rich, blinking. “And...so, uh—”

“It wasn’t true,” Mike says fiercely, before Rich can even start to ask. “Mr. Kane never—he wouldn’t, _never,_ okay? I _earned_ this!”

“Okay!” Rich says, raising his hands. “Okay, man, sir, sorry.”

Mike subsides, breathing a little hard. Crosses his arms and looks back at Liam, frowning. “I stopped it as soon as I had— _any_ idea it was happening,” he says. “Are we good?”

There’s a long span of silence. Rich is drawn in on himself uncomfortably, hands shoved in the pockets of his coat. Liam is meeting Mike’s eyes like the eye-contact is a challenge he’s determined to win. For a long minute, nobody says a word.

“...Well,” says Liam finally. “Well...okay. Fine.”

“Okay?” Chuck repeats.

“Okay,” Liam says, and brushes his hair back away from his face, giving Mike a much warmer look, cautious and slightly bemused. “...Good.”

Mike smiles a little nervously, and it occurs to Chuck, suddenly, that Mike is still only Chuck’s age. Liam is older than him, Ben is a _lot_ older than him, even Rich has got a year or two on him. Mike’s, like...as much the dumb kid here as Chuck is. It’s incredibly weird to think about, but it’s comforting too, somehow. Makes it easier for Chuck to lean a little closer and put a hand on Mike’s shoulder.

“So we’ve got another person to help bully Chuck into eating,” Liam says, and bounces upright. For a second Chuck can see—something, the tension in his shoulders, the furrow between his brows, the effort it takes to look so unconcerned. Then Liam grins at him and the moment passes. “Hon, I’m about two seconds from dragging you down to Organic Modification and putting you on IV nutrition if you don’t stop starving yourself like this.”

“I’m not _starving_ myself,” Chuck says, nettled, and gets upright and then almost falls right back over again as basically all his blood just...fucks right off. Mike yelps and catches him again, and Chuck clings and can’t bother to be embarrassed about it as lights pop and flash in front of his eyes. “Just, _nnh_ , just, ‘m not hungry. Haven’t been hungry.” Although as he says that, there’s...at least a twinge, in his stomach, where there wasn’t before. He doesn’t feel like eating, but he doesn’t feel like it’ll come right back up either. Some of the knotted tension inside him is slowly starting to ease.

“You need to eat, Chuckles,” Mike says quietly, and oh, that’s—really not fair, him saying that so softly next to Chuck’s ear and using the stupid old nickname that makes Chuck’s heart curl up and whimper. Mike bumps his forehead against Chuck’s temple, helps him back onto his feet but leaves an arm around him, and Chuck glares from him to Liam and then sighs.

“ _Fine,_ ” he says, aggrieved. “I can...try.”

“There you go, man,” says Rich, relieved, and gets an arm around Chuck’s other shoulder, supporting Chuck’s weight so completely it kind of feels like he’ll lift off the ground in a second. “Christ, you’ve had us worried. You could probably get picked up by a light breeze and sucked into the air-processing vents right now. I could do bicep curls with you, it’s fucking embarrassing.”

“Dick,” Chuck mumbles, and shoves at both of them until they mostly let him go, leaving Rich’s hand on his shoulder and Mike’s arm around his waist. “Show me the food already.”

—

It’s been one day since the Board of Directors was disbanded. The sun is pouring warm through the windows, and—Chuck’s got more breakdowns coming, he can feel everything he’s been trying not to feel for more than a year starting to creep out through the cracks, but just for a minute, Chuck has his best friend’s arm around him, and his friends are cracking jokes and horsing around to make him laugh, and he feels...he’s just…

“You good?” Mike says, under the sound of Liam getting dramatically upset about carbonated water and Rich making sarcastic, unhelpful comments about it. He looks incongruous, sitting there in the cramped break room in his formal uniform, but his face—but _he’s_ still the same, the same person Chuck’s been missing for years, and the warm glow in Chuck’s chest sets just a little deeper into the frozen knot of old hurt.

“Yeah,” he says, and for the first time in a long time, it doesn’t hurt when he smiles back. “I think I kinda am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 5\. acceptance  
> -  
> ((note: the background techs belong to LaughingStones/RollerskatingLizard, and they helped heavily with cowriting the last few scenes with Ben in them! Everybody give that lizard a hand, and also go read their fics if you haven't already, they're very fun. :D))


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